Apollo and Marsyas (c. 1468): Art, History and Details

Apollo and Marsyas (c. 1468) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Cristoforo di Geremia (Italian, active 1456–76).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This plaquette is based on an important 1st-century gem attributed to Diskourides that passed into the Medici collection in the 1400s. The antique carnelian stone was so popular that the design was copied in numerous variations and media. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Marsyas challenged Apollo to a music contest: his flute versus the god's lyre. As punishment for Marsyas's hubris, Apollo bound him to a tree and had his skin flayed. In the middle of the composition is the diminutive Olympus, Marsyas's student, begging Apollo for mercy. While the exact function of this plaquette is not clear, the subject had significance for political and noble figures in the Renaissance. The lyre symbolized peace, and thus the victory of Apollo's lyre stood for the triumph of universal harmony. When Pope Paul II Barbo (1417–1471) commissioned a portrait medal in 1468, the reverse included this same image, making the connection between his papacy and the new "Peace of Italy."

Object facts

• Title: Apollo and Marsyas
• Date: c. 1468
• Creator attribution: Cristoforo di Geremia (Italian, active 1456–76)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 4.1 x 3.4 x 0.4 cm (1 5/8 x 1 5/16 x 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1969.261

Collection credit

Gift of the John B. Putnam Foundation

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wixom, William D. Renaissance Bronzes from Ohio Collections. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.
• Winter, Patrick M. de. “Recent Accessions of Italian Renaissance Decorative Arts, Part I: Incorporating Notes on the Sculptor Severo Da Ravenna.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 3 (March 1986): 74–138.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.