Flaying of Marsyas (Titian)

Common card · No. 401928

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. 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. It "did not enter critical...

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