Art-Bernini-Apollo & Daphne TB

I maintain records on my trackables. For a US-based trackable, this one is unusual for its longevity and movement. In the six-year period, 2010-16, the owner released a total of 2563 trackables in the United States (96%) and Europe (4%). This trackable is one of the 5% of the total that circulated for at least 5 years and had been moved at least 25 times. That is a target rate of at least five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the US, please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and dry, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

This is one of a series of travel bugs made to recognize art seen and admired by the bug owner.  A digital copy of this work was downloaded from the internet. The copy was reduced in size and proportions cropped to accommodate the laminating materials available to the owner.  Regrettably these processes diminish the effort of the artist.  One truly must see the original in person to fully appreciate the work.  The text below is a mixture of my own observations and material gleaned from the internet (mostly Wikipedia and Web Gallery).

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was an Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century.  He was a painter and an architect as well.  He created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it to such an extent that other artists are of only minor importance in a discussion of that genre.  Bernini's career began under his father, Pietro Bernini, a Florentine sculptor of some talent who ultimately moved to Rome.  The younger Bernini was so talented he earned the praise of the painter Annibale Carracci and the patronage of Pope Paul V.   He was strongly influenced by his close study of the antique Greek and Roman marbles in the Vatican.  He carved for Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, who was later Pope Urban VIII and Bernini's greatest patron. Bernini's early works also attracted the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a member of the reigning papal family.  Under his patronage, Bernini carved his first important life-size sculptural groups, Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius Fleeing Troy (1619; Pluto and Proserpina (1621-22) and Apollo and Daphne (1622-24).  All three are in the Borghese Gallery in Rome and I have made travel bugs to honor each of them.

Bernini created this unprecedented masterpiece for Cardinal Borghese depicting the chaste nymph Daphne being turned into a laurel tree, pursued in vain by Apollo god of light.  As she was about to be caught, she had begged her father Peneus to make her less beautiful.  This life-size marble sculpture, begun by Bernini at the age of twenty-four and executed between 1622 and 1625, has always been housed in the same room of the Cardinal's villa (now the Borghese Museum in Rome).