Fleeing Nymph Daphne in a Landscape

This chalk drawing by the painter Willem van Mieris shows a nymph in a landscape. This subject also appears in this study in a more elaborate drawing in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main (inv. no. 13673 Z). Because of the Frankfurt version, we know that the nymph in our drawing is Daphne fleeing from the Greek god Apollo. Apollo had been struck by Amor with a golden arrow, which stirs love, and Daphne with one made of lead, which drives love away. As Apollo pursued her, Daphne prayed to her father, the river god Peneus, for salvation. Branches sprouted from her arms and roots grew at her feet: she was transformed into a laurel.

Van Mieris depicted the moment when Daphne flees from Apollo. She leans against a tree, a foreshadowing of her imminent metamorphosis into a laurel. The river at her foot symbolises her father as river god. In the Frankfurt version, Apollo is depicted in the lower right.

In the 1680s, Van Mieris produced numerous paintings and drawings depicting young, mythological or Biblical women. For his depictions of the female nude, antique sculptures served as examples. Van Mieris sometimes used these figures in his genre paintings, in which he depicted them as ordinary people. However, no painting has been found for which this drawing served as a study.