Apollo and Marsyas

The Pitti inventory of 1638 lists this picture as Apollo flaying Pan, tied to a trunk, with his foot pressing on the belly. The clerk had the wrong satyr. It is Marsyas, who picked up a flute the goddess Athena had thrown away, got very good at it, and challenged Apollo to a contest in which the winner could do as he liked with the loser.

Cosimo II, grand duke of Tuscany, ordered the canvas on 7 December 1617, and Guercino delivered it the following year, just back from Venice. The trip shows in the colour, warm flesh laid against cool blue and rose-brown in the manner of the painters he had been looking at there. Apollo works at the leg with a small curved knife. Two shepherds stand in the moonlight and watch.