Apollon et Marsyas

For a long time the Louvre labelled this small panel Apollo and Marsyas, the myth in which the god flays a satyr alive for daring to challenge him at music. But the young shepherd here is calm and unbound, a flute in his hand, sitting peacefully opposite Apollo, with none of the horror that story needs. So the museum now calls it Apollo and the shepherd Daphnis, a gentler pairing about music itself. There was a second confusion too. In the 19th century the picture passed as a Raphael, a name that raised its value and its fame. It is in fact by Perugino, who was Raphael's own teacher, which is how the two came to be mixed up. You can see the master's hallmarks, the two slender figures set well apart, the soft rounded hills, the clear still light of an Umbrian afternoon.