Apollo and Daphne by Bernini

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

In Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, we do not see narrative—we witness transformation. Heidegger would find here a unique revelation: the strife of becoming, where Being flees its capture even as it is being formed.

Daphne is caught mid-transformation—hair becomes leaves, fingers become branches, her flight becomes rootedness. Apollo reaches, not in conquest, but in longing. The sculpture does not freeze time—it gathers a world where time is visible in form. Heidegger insists that the work of art is not static—it is a happening. Here, form happens before us—not as conclusion, but as process.

The earth—marble again—is pushed to its ontological edge: made to resemble bark, air, breath. Yet it never fully yields. The world that arises is not resolution, but flux: the divine’s desire for beauty, and beauty’s refusal to be possessed. It is a myth not retold, but re-lived as form.

This sculpture does not depict myth. It enacts Being’s refusal to be fixed—Daphne flees into earth, and the earth responds with rooted transformation. In this, Bernini creates not a story, but a clearing where metamorphosis is Being’s mode of truth.