The Flaying of Marsyas is a painting by the Italian late Renaissance artist Titian, probably painted between about 1570 and his death in 1576, when in his eighties. It is now in the Archbishop's Palace in Kroměříž, Czech Republic and belongs to the Archbishopric of Olomouc (administered by Olomouc Museum of Art – Archdiocesan Museum). It is one of Titian's last works, and may be unfinished, although there is a partial signature on the stone in the foreground.Robertson, 231; only "... NUS P" remains, presumably from "TITIANUS P[inxit]" – "Titian painted this".
The painting shows the killing by flaying or skinning alive of Marsyas, a satyr who rashly challenged the god Apollo to a musical contest. It is one of several canvases with mythological subjects from Ovid which Titian executed in his late years, mostly the poesie series for King Philip II of Spain, of which this painting seems not to have been part.
The painting has been in Kroměříž in Moravia since 1673, and was rather forgotten about, being off the beaten track as far as Venetian painting is concerned.Hale, 717-718 It "did not enter critical literature until 1909".Robertson, 231 By the 1930s it was "widely accepted as an important late work" among scholars,Robertson, 231 but little known by a wider public.
On its first modern appearance abroad, it "was greeted with astonished admiration" as the "star attraction" of a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1983,Hale, 718 quoted 1st; Rosand (2010), 19 quoted 2nd; Robertson is the catalogue entry It was new to most viewers and was described by John Russell in the New York Times as "the most astonishing picture in the show".John Russell, ART: VENETIANS OF 1500S AT BRITISH ROYAL ACADEMY, 17 December 1983; Rosand, 1985, 295–297 Beginning an extended analysis, Sir Lawrence Gowing wrote that "All these months – it is not too much to say – London has been half under the spell of this masterpiece, in which the tragic sense that overtook Titian’s poesie in his seventies reached its cruel and solemn extreme. At most hours on most days there is a knot of visitors riveted and fairly perplexed in front of it. ... At the Academy people still ask, and on the radio well-meaning critics debate, how it is possible that a horribly painful subject should be the occasion of beauty or greatness in art."Gowing
Description and subject
The choice of such a violent scene was perhaps inspired by the death of Marcantonio Bragadin, the Venetian commander of Famagusta in Cyprus who was flayed by the Ottomans when the city fell in August 1571, causing enormous outrage in Venice.Hale, 715; Sohm, 97; Richard Titian's composition is undoubtedly derived from that of Giulio Romano from several decades before (see "Visual sources" below).Robertson, 231
Both artists follow the account in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 6, lines 382–400),www.theoi.com Text of Ovid Metamorphoses Book 6 in English which covers the contest very quickly, but describes the flaying scene at relative length, though with few indications that would help to visualize it.Gowing; Richard Marsyas cries out "Why do you tear me from myself?".Quoted, Hale, 712-713; Wind, 172, Ovid's line 385
Marsyas was a skillful player of the classical aulos or double flute, for which by Titian's time pan pipes were usually substituted in art,Bull, 305 for a range of other instruments he was given, but all of them from the wind section. The contest with Pan is also covered in Metamorphoses (XI, 146-93) and his set hangs from the tree over his head. Apollo played his usual lyre, which is here represented by a modern lira da braccio, an ancestor of the violin with up to seven strings. This is played by a figure of uncertain identity, who some scholars have said to be Apollo himself, perhaps appearing a second time, since Apollo is clearly the figure wearing a laurel wreath who is kneeling down and using his knife to flay Marsyas' chest.Held, 187; Hale, 714; Robertson, 231–232; Gowing It has also been suggested that the musician is Orpheus, or Olympus, a devoted pupil of Marsyas, who Apollo later converts to playing the lyre, and Ovid mentions.Rosand (2010), 22; Sohm, 96; Gowing The mythical King Midas, the seated old man on the right, is often thought to be a self-portrait.Held, 187; Robertson, 231; Sohm, 97; Glover His downward line of gaze at Marsyas is parallel to that of the musician looking up to the heavens on the other side of the painting.
Ovid avoids the question of who the judges of the contest were. In most Greek accounts the Three Muses did the role, but the story early became confused with another, the "Judgement of Midas", which has happened here. This was another musical contest, always with lyre versus pan pipes, but with Pan himself on the pipes. Of course Apollo won, but in some accounts King Midas preferred Pan, and was given the ears of a donkey as punishment, while Pan was merely humiliated. The seated figure at right wears a diadem and is Midas, though his ears seem unaffected.Bull, 303–305; Hall, 27–28; Robertson, 232; Hale, 713. Whether Midas was actually supposed to be the judge, or just a spectator, varies between accounts. The "Judgement of Midas" was also sometimes painted. Both stories were set in Phrygia, in modern Turkey, where Midas ruled, which in the ancient world had various associations with music. The Phrygians were not Greek, until Hellenized after Alexander the Great, but lived on the edge of the Greek world. The human with the knife wears a Phrygian cap.
Apollo is assisted by a sinister "Scythian" figure on the left, working on Marsyas' leg, and a satyr with a bucket behind Midas, perhaps to collect blood, or hold the removed skin, which in some versions of the story Apollo later had nailed up in a temple. A small boy, or boy satyr,Hale, 714; What little can be seen of his legs seems to be furry, and he is described as a satirino by several authors restrains a large dog at right, while a much smaller dog is lapping at the blood that has fallen to the ground.Gowing As was typical in Titian's day, and especially in his works, the satyr is shown with the legs and feet of a goat, and inverting him emphasizes these, as well as giving him the position typical of mid-sized animals being slaughtered or skinned before butchering.Bull, 303–304; Hale, 713 Most of his body still seems unflayed, but Apollo holds a large flap of detached skin in the hand not holding his knife.
Compositionally, the "V" shape made by Marsyas's legs is echoed by the highlighted "V"s of the bent arms of the four figures nearest to him, all of whom are looking at him. Indeed, his navel is almost exactly at the centre of the canvas as it now is."John Dubrow on Titian" in Painters on Paintings; Rosand (2010), 27 Technical examinations have determined that two of the main differences to the Giulio Romano composition are changes made well after painting was underway; originally the musician merely held his instrument, as in the Giulio Romano composition, and the boy or small satyr and the large dog were not present.Held, 187 A version of the subject with these features, not by Titian or his workshop but perhaps roughly contemporary, is in a private collection in Venice. It may be based on a different version by Titian, or a study, and in these respects is closer to the Giulio Romano drawing (illustrated below)."Late Titian in Venice", exhibition review, March 2008
Meaning
Many writers have attempted to capture the meaning of the "famously savage" painting,Royal, 222 which, despite "the brutality of the treatment",Robertson, 232 has been found powerfully compelling by many, and described as "the most discussed, revered and loathed of all Titian's paintings".Hale, 718 One common suggestion has been that the painting reflects ideas in Renaissance Neoplatonism about the "liberation of the spirit from the body",Held, 187–189; Sohm, 97 quoted; Rosand (2010), 40 or the acquisition of higher insight or clarity.Wind, 171–173, on other 16th-century depictions Such ideas are usually considered to be involved in another famous treatment of flaying: the flayed skin carrying a self-portrait face of Michelangelo, held by Saint Bartholomew as his attribute in The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. One of Michelangelo's poems had used the metaphor of a snake shedding its old skin for his hope for a new life after his death.Sistine, 206; Wind, 187–188; Hale, 713-714
In this spirit, Dante began his Paradiso with a prayer addressed to Apollo, who he asks to "Enter my breast, and so infuse me your spirit as you did Marsyas when you tore him from the cover of his limbs.Wind, 173–174, quoting Paradiso I, 13–21; Hale, 713 In some other Renaissance depictions, Marsyas's furry legs appear human when flayed, so he "is redeemed from the animality that condemned him to this terrible fate".Bull, 305
The philosopher-turned-novelist Iris Murdoch was especially fascinated by the painting, which she described in an interview as "the greatest in the Western canon". It is mentioned in three of her novels, and sometimes discussed by the characters. In her portrait for the National Portrait Gallery by Tom Phillips, a reproduction occupies most of the wall behind her head.the painting She said it was "something to do with human life and all its ambiguities and all its horrors and terrors and misery, and at the same time there’s something beautiful, the picture is beautiful, and something also to do with the entry of the spiritual into the human situation and the closeness of the gods ..."Paris Review. The novels are A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970), The Black Prince (1973), and her last, Jackson's Dilemma (1995); Hale, 718
The general interpretation of the story of Marsyas was as an illustration of the inevitable disaster that followed hubris in the form of a challenge to a god. An idea of the contest reinforcing the general moral and artistic superiority of the courtly lyre, or modern stringed instruments, over the rustic and frivolous wind family was present in much ancient discussion, and perhaps retained some relevance in the 16th century. Gowing comments: "It was on behalf of order and the laws of harmonious proportion, which sound in the music of strings, that Apollo claimed victory over the chaotic and impulsive sound of the pipes."Gowing; Rosand (2010), 19–20; Held, 190; Hale, 713, 715-717 For Edgar Wind the contest determined "the relative powers of Dionysian darkness and Apollonian clarity; and if the contest ended with the flaying of Marsyas, it was because flaying was itself a Dionysian rite, a tragic ordeal of purification by which the ugliness of the outward man was thrown off and the beauty of his inward self revealed".Wind, 172–173 Alternatively, there have been suggestions that the painting has a political meaning, either general or specific, and depicts the "just punishment" of hubristic opponents.Held, 190–191, 193
The 'three ages of man' are all represented (if satyrs are allowed to count), indeed on the right they are aligned diagonally. The boy or young satyr is looking rather vacuously out at the viewer, those in their prime are concentrating on their tasks with a variety of expressions, and Midas contemplates the scene, apparently with melancholy resignation, but making no further attempt to intervene.Held, 191–192; Sohm, 97–98; Rosand (2010), 22; Matthews
History