Apollo

After Lucrezia Borgia died in 1519, her widower, Duke Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara, began a relationship with a young woman named Laura Dianti. The Galleria Borghese thinks Dosso painted this Apollo around 1525 to mark that union, perhaps for her palace, the Palazzina della Rosa. Its subject is a story of love. Ovid tells how Apollo mocked Cupid, was struck by his arrow, and chased the nymph Daphne until she turned into a laurel. Look down the slope on the left and you can find her, arms turning into branches. Dosso shows the god as a musician who has just finished his song. He lifts the bow from the instrument on his shoulder and already wears the laurel in her memory, which may be why a Borghese payment of 1612 seems to call the canvas a portrait of Orpheus.