The story of Apollo and Daphne was famous and popular in art; seized with love, the god Apollo pursued the girl Daphne, who prayed to her father the river god Peneus to save her. At the last moment she was changed into a laurel tree. Here the naked Apollo clasps Daphne just as her fingers are beginning to turn into laurel branches and her foot is sprouting roots. At her feet is her father, his left hand about her right leg. This is one of seven original cartoons for the fresco decorations on the walls of a room in the Palazzo del Giardino at Parma. The ceiling of the room had already been frescoed by Agostino Carraci with scenes illustrative of the power of love, and Cignani’s compositions illustrate the same theme more widely. The whole theme of the series derives from that of the galleria frescoes of the Palazzo Farnese, Rome. The frescoes were begun in about 1678 and survive today, although they suffered damage in the Second World War. Cignani is recorded to have had collaborators on the frescoes; the cartoons, however, can be claimed as his own work. Joseph Smith certainly owned the cartoons by 1738, and probably as early as 1735. They are described in great detail by Abbate Gherardi in his anonymous ‘Descrizione’ (1749) and were engraved by Jean-Michel Liotard in the ‘Monochromata’ (1743).