Apollo and Daphne

What hangs here as a painting on canvas began as plaster on a wall. In 1799 Appiani frescoed five scenes from the stories of Apollo in a Milanese palace belonging to the Sannazzari family, and this is the one where Daphne turns into a laurel as the god reaches her, a composition that looks back to Bernini's marble group in Rome.

By 1814 that house was the residence of Giuseppe Prina, finance minister of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy and detested in Milan for the taxes he levied. On 20 April a crowd killed him and stripped the building of everything down to the railings and the gutters. It was judged past repair and demolished five weeks later.

The frescoes were cut off the walls that same year. This one came to the Brera. Others went to Milan's Galleria d'Arte Moderna, which also keeps Appiani's charcoal cartoons for the cycle.