In Ovid’s Metamorphoses Clytie was a nymph in love with Apollo: when she realized that the god was neglecting her to go to Leucothoe, daughter of Orchamus, king of the Achaemenids, jealous of the girl, she decided to reveal to her father the union of her daughter with the god of the Sun, and this caused her to be buried alive. Apollo, however, having lost his beloved Leucothoe, no longer wanted to see Clytie, who, therefore, began to perish, refusing to feed and drinking only her frost and her tears. The nymph spent the rest of her days sitting on the ground observing the god who drove the chariot of the Sun into the sky without even looking at her, until, consumed by love, she turned into a flower, which changes inclination during the day according to displacement of the star in the sky, and therefore it is called sunflower. The mythological fable is represented by Charles de la Fosse in 1688, in this oil on canvas preserved in the Palace of Versailles.
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