Monthly Archives: April 2011

Apollo and Daphne

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Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne at the Villa Borghese

It’s a beautiful Spring. Perhaps we should all get chased through the forest and pray to be turned into trees?


I still contend that Daphne gets the better end of the “tree-woman” (see my Huldra’s post) stick in art history, and this statue testifies to that. Bernini tells the myth of Daphne being turned into a tree to escape the God Apollo beautifully, and I remember when I saw it in person at 15 being awestruck by the movement and softness of the sculpture. It is still one of my favorites.

Huldras

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The Huldra, Thomas Dodd. Available for sale at Redbubble.

The myth is that you follow the Huldra into the forest. Then once the beautiful and enticing Huldra turns away from you, you see that her back is like an oak tree with a hollow spot and that she has an animal’s tail.

These are the more chaste images of her I could find–I leave it to you to make your own Google search. There is certainly a dearth of huldra representation. In terms of tree women, Daphne definitely gets more artistic attention.

Huldra by Maria Friberg Berntsson. Here.

Huldra [with red-hatted gnomes!]

Amy Talluto at Black and White Gallery

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White Pine, Oil on Canvas

I popped into Amy Talluto‘s show Huldra at Black and White Gallery this weekend, and her forest landscapes had me back to reminiscing about the trees, particularly the white birches, of Sweden. Not that there were any white birches in the show–rather the artist caught the light and the density of the forest while adding something evocative and mysterious. Perhaps a little like the childhood wonder I felt being alone in a forest where trolls might lurk among the mushrooms. In an odd coincidence, the title of the show comes from an old Swedish tale–a Huldra being a witch who lures men deep into the forest

Huldra, Oil on Canvas

Her surfaces alternate between being dense with intricate color, like the trunk of this tree appearing like the inside of oyster shells, and light-filled space like green background beyond.

Burn, 2006

Up at Black and Gallery through May 15 (and especially the bigger paintings like the one below appear much better there than in this small reproduction).

Sunset, Oil on canvas