The Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1570–1605): Art, History and Details

The Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1570–1605) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jan van der Straet, called Johannes Stradanus (Netherlandish, active Italy, 1523–1605).

The work and its context

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

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.

Object facts

• Title: The Flaying of Marsyas
• Date: c. 1570–1605
• Creator attribution: Jan van der Straet, called Johannes Stradanus (Netherlandish, active Italy, 1523–1605)
• Culture: Netherlands, 16th - 17th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and brown ink and brown and red washes, heightened with white paint (or gouache), on paper prepared with red washes
• Dimensions: Sheet: 21.1 x 31.5 cm (8 5/16 x 12 3/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Belgian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2018.26

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Peters, Emily and Salsbury, Britany. “Acquisitions 2018: Prints and Drawings.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 59, no. 2 (March/April 2019): 20-23.

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.