Cleveland Museum of Art

The Flaying of Marsyas

Jan van der Straet, called Johannes StradanusLinkedCulture matchlcp-e6ec9a9b4cc3

Date: c. 1570–1605
Medium: Pen and brown ink and brown and red washes, heightened with white paint (or gouache), on paper prepared with red washes
Culture: Netherlands, 16th - 17th century
Department: Drawings
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 312174

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

In this gruesome mythological scene, Apollo begins to flay, or peel the skin off, the satyr Marsyas as punishment for his arrogant challenge in a musical contest. The surrounding Olympian gods show reactions ranging from horror to fascination. The artist Johannes Stradanus helped found the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing) in Florence in 1563, which instituted a course of training for artists that included observing a human dissection. In making this image, Stradanus very likely understood the flaying of Marsyas as a metaphor for the importance of dissection and anatomical study to the artist.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
Provenance: Didier Aaron et Cie, Paris, France | June 4, 2018: the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH