Art card Albani, Apollo and Daphne, Louvre, Neurdein Frères Paris

French art postcard in sepia collotype reproducing Apollo and Daphne, a painting by the Italian master Francesco Albani held in the collection of the Musée du Louvre, published by Neurdein Freres in Paris under number 1410. The composition shows the moment of the mythological pursuit: Daphne, on the left, flees before the approaching Apollo, while above to the right, among the clouds, Cupid has set the scene in motion with his bow. The caption gives the museum provenance, the school of origin, the artist's dates and his Italian nickname, l'Albane. The card is unposted; condition is used, with discolouration, some staining and paper of moderate thickness, the composition remaining fully legible.

Francesco Albani, born in Bologna in 1578 and died in the same city in 1660, belonged to the Bolognese school formed around the Carracci brothers, and worked in a classicising and graceful manner that earned him the nickname l'Albane. His mythological compositions set within landscape, with Apollo and Daphne as a recurring subject, were reproduced and collected well into the eighteenth century by European courts and art lovers. The Ovidian tale, drawn from the first book of the Metamorphoses, recounts how Apollo, struck by Eros with a golden arrow, conceives a vain love for the nymph Daphne, who, pierced by a leaden arrow from the same god, flees him until she is transformed into a laurel tree. Neurdein Freres, active in Paris during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ranked among the principal French photographers of the national museum collections, and issued under the ND Phot. imprint substantial series of postcards.