JORIS HOEFNAGEL (Antwerp, 1542 - Vienna, 1600) Apollo and Daphne with a frame of flowers, fruit, insects and a shell (c. 1598-1600) Tempera and gold on parchment, mm 210X275 Traced back to Joris Hoefnagel's catalogue by Elena de Laurentiis, the parchment depicts the episode of Apollo and Daphne from Ovid's Metamorphoses (1, 452-567) and describes the moment when the nymph is transformed into a laurel bush. The scene is also surrounded by flowers, fruit, insects and a shell, while the scroll at the top of the medallion bears the inscription 'Virginitate frui', a verse taken from the same Ovidian myth and alluding to the theme of chastity. The author, as we know, is known for his 'cabinet miniatures', i.e. small tempera paintings framed like pictures. The parchment under examination is compared with the Allegory of Vanitas within an oval medallion, a putto holding a skull and an hourglass in a landscape, surrounded by a still life with small animals and roses, belonging to the collections of the British Museum in London, signed and dated by Joris Hoefnagel in 1598, is believed to be a collaborative work between the artist and his son Jacob, to whom the central figure has been attributed for its soft modelling and a more stippled and shaded drafting than his father's. Therefore, the Apollo and Daphne examined here, in terms of composition, drafting and naturalistic motifs, is instead due to the exclusive hand of Joris and at a time close to the London work. The work is accompanied by a critical file by Elena De Laurentiis. Reference bibliography: L. Hendrix, T. Vignau-Wilberg, Mira calligraphiae monumenta. A Sixteenth-Century Calligraphic Manuscript Inscribed by Georg Bocskay and Illuminated by Joris Hoefnagel, Malibu 1992, ad vocem T. Vignau-Wilberg, Flowers for His Mother: An Unknown Cabinet Miniature by Joris Hoefnagel, in Master Drawings, Vol. 45, No. 4, Still-Life & Natural History Drawings (Winter, 2007), pp. 522-526 T. Vignau-Wilberg, Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel. Art and Science around 1600, Berlin 2017, ad vocem