IMAGES AND THE BODYENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITIONleaves (Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1). Smith portrays the
body of the helpless nymph crucified by her own wish.
Although Ovid indicates that it was the malice of Cupid
that inflicted love upon the chaste girl by piercing Apollo
with his fated arrow, Daphne blames her body for incit-
ing desire. Smith leaves us to wonder why the body of a
woman suffers as the victim of the male assault of desire.
By contrast, the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini
produced a virtuoso performance in marble (k) in which
the viewer is intended to marvel at the sensuous trans-
formation of marble into flesh as well as marble into tree
limbs and foliage, almost without pausing to consider the
injustice done to Daphne.
The violent stilling of desire occupies a great deal of
religious energy. Hinduism, like Christianity, possesses a
long-established ascetic tradition in which practitioners
deny themselves physical comforts, dress, and possessions,
and take only the least amount of nutrition, as in the case
of the Indian Sādhu or holy man shown here (l). One of
the oldest aspects of Christianity is mortification of the
flesh. In the later Middle Ages and the early modern peri-
od, visual contemplation of Christ’s suffering was one of
the primary forms of Christian spirituality. Following the
Protestant Reformation, a reassertion of images of suffer-
ing—portraying Christ, his disciples, and the saints—were
designed to invite devout viewers to direct their attention
and devotion to the self-effacing merits of Christ (m) and(l) ABOVE. An Indian sādhu and a woman at prayer in Vārān.asī.
[©David Samuel/Corbis] (m) LEFT. Giovanni di Paolo, Christ Suf-
fering and Christ Triumphant, later fifteenth century, portrays the
two aspects of Christ, demonstrating the doctrine of salvation
afforded by his sacrifical death on the cross and his power over
death as final judge. [©Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.]VV13.indd 7 13 .indd 7 1 10/15/04 5:30:19 PM 0 / 15 / 04 5 : 30 : 19 PM