Tityus

The giant chained on the rock is Tityus, who in Greek myth assaulted a goddess and was condemned to lie in the underworld while his liver was torn out and grew back, day after day, so that the torment never ended. Ovid gives that work to vultures. Titian gave it to an eagle, and the reason is a drawing: Michelangelo's Punishment of Tityus, made in 1532 for Tommaso de' Cavalieri, where the bird is an eagle. Its dark wing spreads across the whole top of the canvas. Titian had first painted the subject around 1548 for Mary of Hungary, regent of the Netherlands, as one of four punished sinners meant as a warning while her brother, the emperor Charles the Fifth, was locked in conflict with the rebellious Protestant princes of Germany. This canvas is his own later repetition, around 1565, the paint thinned almost to a stain. Low on the left the fires of Hades burn, and a snake coils among the rocks at the right.