Marsyas1.0035

Titian [Tiziano Vecellio], c. 1488/90-1576. "The Flaying of Marsyas", oil on canvas, ca. 1570-1575. Archiepiscopal Palace, Kroměříž (Kremsier), Czechoslovakia.

"The myth of Marsyas was endlessly fascinating for ancient and modern artists, owing to its tragic conclusion as much as to the manifold forms of opposition symbolized by the contest between reckless satyr and the god Apollo. In 16th century art, the flaying of Marsyas was depicted with even greater crudity than in Roman sculpture, with the victim shown [as in Titian] helplessly hanged upside-down." Grafton, Most, & De Settis fig. 92.

Titian's adaptation of the myth may comment upon the Turks' execution of the Venetian general Marcantonio Bragadin after he surrendered in 1571 the Cypriot city of Famagusta. Titian follows Giulio Romano who was the first modern artist to hang the satyr upside down, but Titian is especially innovative in fracturing the distance between Apollo and the gruesome cruelty of the flaying. The god is intimately and actively involved in his rival's' excruciating agony. — Rapp, 78

Titian often focuses on Ovidian narrative details in his Poeseis. Thus, here he seems to cleave to the poet's attention to the moment immediately before Marsyas becomes nec quicquam nisi vulnus "nothing but a single wound" (6.388). The mourners on whom Ovid will focus in the episode's conclusion are allowed to stand by in Titian's depiction.

For further reading:
Moog-Grünewald, RMM s.v. "Marsyas" [HJDrügh]
Rapp, J. (1987), "Tizians Maryas in Kremsier. Ein neuplatonisch-orphisches Mysterium vom Leiden des Menschen und seiner Erlösung," Pantheon 45: 70-89.

figure 82 in Grafton, Most, and Settis, The Classical Tradition, s.v. "parodies"