How does Flaying of Marsyas (Titian) elucidate its Meaning?
Many writers have attempted to capture the meaning of the "famously savage" painting, which, despite "the brutality of the treatment", has been found powerfully compelling by many, and described as "the most discussed, revered and loathed of all Titian's paintings".  One common suggestion has been that the painting reflects ideas in Renaissance Neoplatonism about the "liberation of the spirit from the body", or the acquisition of higher insight or clarity.  Such ideas are usually considered to be involved in another famous treatment of flaying: the flayed skin carrying a self-portrait face of Michelangelo, held by Saint Bartholomew as his attribute in The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.  One of Michelangelo's poems had used the metaphor of a snake shedding its old skin for his hope for a new life after his death.In this spirit, Dante began his Paradiso with a prayer addressed to Apollo, who he asks to "Enter my breast, and so infuse me your spirit as you did Marsyas when you tore him from the cover of his limbs.  In some other Renaissance depictions, Marsyas's furry legs appear human when flayed, so he "is redeemed from the animality that condemned him to this terrible fate".The philosopher-turned-novelist Iris Murdoch was especially fascinated by the painting, which she described in an interview as "the greatest in the Western canon".  It is mentioned in three of her novels, and sometimes discussed by the characters. In her portrait for the National Portrait Gallery by Tom Phillips, a reproduction occupies most of the wall behind her head.  She said it was "something to do with human life and all its ambiguities and all its horrors and terrors and misery, and at the same time there’s something beautiful, the picture is beautiful, and something also to do with the entry of the spiritual into the human situation and the closeness of the gods ..."The general interpretation of the story of Marsyas was as an illustration of the inevitable disaster that followed hubris in the form of a challenge to a god. An idea of the contest reinforcing the general moral and artistic superiority of the courtly lyre, or modern stringed instruments, over the rustic and frivolous wind family was present in much ancient discussion, and perhaps retained some relevance in the 16th century.  Gowing comments: "It was on behalf of order and the laws of harmonious proportion, which sound in the music of strings, that Apollo claimed victory over the chaotic and impulsive sound of the pipes." For Edgar Wind the contest determined "the relative powers of Dionysian darkness and Apollonian clarity; and if the contest ended with the flaying of Marsyas, it was because flaying was itself a Dionysian rite, a tragic ordeal of purification by which the ugliness of the outward man was thrown off and the beauty of his inward self revealed".  Alternatively, there have been suggestions that the painting has a political meaning, either general or specific, and depicts the "just punishment" of hubristic opponents.The 'three ages of man' are all represented (if satyrs are allowed to count), indeed on the right they are aligned diagonally.  The boy or young satyr is looking rather vacuously out at the viewer, those in their prime are concentrating on their tasks with a variety of expressions, and Midas contemplates the scene, apparently with melancholy resignation, but making no further attempt to intervene.
Sistine Chapel National Portrait Gallery Paradiso The Last Judgment Titian hubris flaying Tom Phillips Renaissance Neoplatonism satyr Edgar Wind Apollo Saint Bartholomew lyre Midas Marsyas Michelangelo Dante Iris Murdoch