Nymphs Cutting Off Pan's Beard

For a long time this canvas went by the title Marsyas Ill-Treated by the Muses. Marsyas was the satyr who lost a music contest to Apollo and was flayed for it, and the name seemed to fit a goat-legged figure pinned down by a ring of women. The subject has since been traced to the Imagines of Philostratus, a Greek writer of the third century who described the paintings in a gallery at Naples. In his account the country nymphs, tired of Pan's clumsy dancing and his advances, catch him asleep at noon, tie his hands behind his back and cut off the beard he is proudest of. The Rijksmuseum reads the young man standing above them as Apollo, god of the arts, directing the punishment.

Jordaens painted it around 1640. It belongs to the Rijksmuseum, which has lent it to the Mauritshuis since 1948, and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V. In Philostratus the nymphs also threaten to talk Echo into never answering Pan's call again.