Apolo y Marsias

Julius II would not sleep in the rooms of his predecessor Alexander VI, whose family he loathed, so in 1508 he moved a floor up into a suite that needed decorating. Painters were already at work there, among them Sodoma, who had begun the ceiling. Then a 25-year-old from Urbino arrived, and by Vasari's account the Pope had the other men's frescoes knocked off the walls to clear the way for him. Raphael kept parts of Sodoma's ceiling anyway and fitted his own four scenes into the existing framework. This is one of them. Apollo has beaten the satyr Marsyas in a music contest and is about to have him flayed alive for the presumption of the challenge. It sits in the vault beside the wall where Apollo turns up again, on Parnassus, playing quietly among the poets.