Bartolomeo Manfredi : Apollo and Marsyas

Bartolomeo Manfredi
, Italian
, 1582-1622
Apollo and Marsyas
1615-20
37 5/8 x 53 9/16 inches (95.5 x 136 cm)
oil on canvas

Marsyas is the flute player who engaged in a musical contest with Apollo, and having lost, was flayed alive by the god.


Phrygian tales

Some Phrygian stories tell that the daughter of the river god Sangarius took the fruit of an almond tree that had grown up from the sexual organ of Agdistis, which the gods had cut off, and found herself pregnant with Attis.

When later Attis, who was dear to Cybele, died after going mad and castrating himself, the goddess went out to the countryside, and crying and beating upon a kettledrum, she visited every country.



Marsyas joins Cybele

In her wanderings, she met Marsyas, who feeling pity for her grief, followed her voluntarily in her journey until they came to the abode of Dionysus 2 in the town of Nysa, which, like the country and the mountain of the same name, is of uncertain location.

Marsyas meets fate in legendary Nysa

In Nysa they met Apollo, and they also learned how famous the god was because of his musical performances with the lyre that Hermes had invented and that Apollo himself had made even more perfect. For Hermes invented the three-stringed lyre, but Apollo added four strings to it, creating unprecedented harmonious sounds.

Athena and the flute

Now Marsyas was an accomplished flute-player, for some time before he had found the flute which Athena had thrown away because it made her ugly. Some have said that Hyagnis invented the flute, but others affirm that the first long flute was made by Athena out of deer bones, or by piercing boxwood with holes wide apart, and that, proud of her invention, she came to the banquet of the gods to play. However, Aphrodite and Hera, seeing Athena's cheeks puffed out, mocked the latter in her playing and called her ugly. This is why Athena came to a spring in Mount Ida in order to view herself in the water; and having looked at herself in the water of the spring, she understood why she was mocked, and threw away the flute, vowing that whoever picked it up would be severely punished:

"The sound was pleasing; but in the water that reflected my face I saw my virgin cheeks puffed up. I value not the art so high; farewell my flute!" [Athena. Ovid, Fasti 6.697]

Marsyas challenges Apollo

He who found the flute was the shepherd Marsyas, who having learned by art and practice to produce ever sweeter sounds, happened to meet Apollo and his lyre. He then challenged the god to a musical contest, which took place, some say, in the mentioned city of Nysa, being either the Nysaeans or the MUSES the judges. They also agreed that the victor should do what he wished with the defeated.


The contest

Some have told that Marsyas was departing as victor when Apollo, turning his lyre upside down, played the same tune, a prowess that Marsyas could not do with the flute. But others affirm that Marsyas was defeated when Apollo added his voice to the sound of the lyre. Marsyas protested, arguing that the skill with the instrument was to be compared, and not the voice. However, Apollo replied that when Marsyas blew into the pipes, he was doing almost the same thing as himself. And the argument presented by Apollo was judged by the Nysaeans, or by the MUSES, to be the most just, and that is why, after comparing their skills again, Marsyas was defeated. Some have said that it was on this occasion that King Midas got the ears of an ass.




Marsyas' death

Having won the contest, Apollo flayed Marsyas alive while the unfortunate musician hanged on a tall pine-tree, or else he let a slave from Scythia do this. And while his skin was stripped off the surface of his body that was but one wound, Marsyas complained:

"Why do you tear me from myself? Oh, I repent! Oh, a flute is not worth such a price!" [Marsyas. Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.385]

Apollo repents

It is told that the god quickly repented, and being distressed at his horrible deed, he broke the four strings of the lyre that he had discovered. For Hermes had invented the three-stringed lyre and Apollo had added four more strings to it. These were later rediscovered, partly by the MUSES, when they added a middle string, partly by one Linus, who added the string struck with the forefinger, and partly by Orpheus and Thamyris 1, who discovered the remaining two strings that Apollo had broken.



Marsyas hanging

The river Marsyas, which empties into the Meander in Phrygia, was called after the defeated musician, and was created by the tears of those who grieved him, SATYRS, NYMPHS, country people, and many others.

Marsyas' flute

The flute of Marsyas, they say, was dedicated in a temple in Sicyon, a city on the Peloponnesian coast of the Gulf of Corinth. For when the musician died, the river Marsyas carried the flute to the river Meander, and after reappearing in the Asopus in Boeotia, it was cast ashore in the country around Sicyon, where a shepherd found it and gave it to Apollo.


Deed of Marsyas after death

According to the Phrygians from Celaenae (a city in Caria, southwestern Asia Minor), Marsyas was the composer of the Song of the Mother, an air for the flute. When many years later they repelled the Gauls that had attacked them, they said that Marsyas had defended them against the barbarians from the river that bears his name, and by the music of his flute.

Bartolomeo Manfredi

Bartolomeo Manfredi (baptised 25 August 1582–12 December 1622) was an Italian painter, a leading member of the Caravaggisti (followers of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) of the early 16th century.

Manfredi was born in Ostiano, near Cremona. He may have been a pupil of Caravaggio in Rome—at his famous libel trial in 1603 Caravaggio mentioned that a certain Bartolomeo, accused of distributing scurrilous poems attacking Caravaggio's detested rival Baglione, had been a servant of his. Certainly the Bartolomeo Manfredi known to art history was a close follower of Caravaggio's innovatory style, with its enhanced chiaroscuro and insistence on naturalism, with a gift for story-telling through expression and body-language.

Caravaggio in his brief career—he rocketed to fame in 1600, was exiled from Rome in 1606, and was dead by 1610—had a profound effect on the younger generation of artists, particularly in Rome and Naples. And of these Caravaggisti (followers of Caravaggio), Manfredi seems in turn to have been the most influential in transmitting the master's legacy to the next generation, particularly with painters from France and the Netherlands who came to Italy. Unfortunately no documented, signed works by Manfredi survive, and several of the forty or so works now attributed to him were formerly believed to be by Caravaggio. The steady disentangling of Caravaggio from Manfredi has made clear that it was Manfredi, rather than his master, who was primarily responsible for popularising low-life genre painting among the second generation of Caravaggisti.

Manfredi was a successful artist, able to keep his own servant before he was thirty years old, "a man of distinguished appearance and fine behaviour" according to the biographer Giulio Mancini, although seldom sociable. He built his career around easel paintings for private clients, and never pursued the public commissions upon which wider reputations were built, but his works were widely collected in the 17th century and he was considered Caravaggio's equal or even superior. His Mars Chastising Cupid offers a tantalising hint at a lost Caravaggio: the master promised a painting on this theme to Mancini, but another of Caravaggio's patrons, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, had taken it, and Mancini therefore commissioned Manfredi to paint another for him, which Mancini considered Manfredi's best work.

Manfredi died in Rome in 1622.



Mars Chastising Cupid, Art Institute of Chicago. Once attributed to Caravaggio, a typical Caravaggesque genre scene of the type popularised by Manfredi.