Two striking
spalliere (paintings made to be shown at shoulder height) depict the pursuit of Daphne by Apollo. The first presents her asleep in a rural scene, dress falling open at the thigh where a zagging gold thread strains to keep the folds together. Apollo stands over her, leaning on a staff, head in profile, gaze intent on the recumbent figure. His impending act of predation we know, as fifteenth-century viewers would have known from their Ovid, that this balmy scene of visual consumption portends attempted rape is touched off by a moment of calm spectatorship. Apollo is all action in the next panel, chasing Daphne with arm outstretched as her limbs begin to transform into the woody roots of a tree, but the first painting strikes me as the more ominous of the pair. It implicitly enlists us as Apollo’s accomplices. Looking at a painting of a sleeping woman is uncomfortably analogized to sexual assault.