In this artwork, how is the Visual sources discussed?
Marsyas, as a single figure, was a well-known subject in Roman and Hellenistic sculpture, with a famous type showing him tied and hanging with his arms above his head.  This probably originated in Hellenistic Pergamon, and was well-known from various examples by the late Renaissance, followed for example by Raphael in a small scene on the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican.  But this is not a very direct influence on Titian's composition.Much closer is "an awkward sketch for a now damaged fresco" by Giulio Romano in the Palazzo Te in Mantua (1524–34), for which there is also a drawing in the Louvre; this is clearly the main source for the composition.  It has all the same figures and elements except the boy and the dogs, in roughly the same positions, including, apparently for the first time in art, Marsyas shown tied upside down.  The standing figure at left is a servant holding a lyre, rather than Titian's lira da bracchio player.  The seated figure of Midas has donkey ears, and is more clearly distressed, holding his hands over his face, and Apollo, bending down rather than on one knee, is not cutting, but is pulling the skin off like a jacket.Andrea Schiavone's Judgement of Midas in the British Royal Collection (in 2017 displayed in the Gallery at Kensington Palace), is some twenty years earlier, from c. 1548–50, and is comparable to Titian, in atmosphere and some details of the composition.  Titian "must also have remembered elements of this painting: the pensive and abstracted attitudes of Apollo and Midas, and the radically free impressionistic brushwork used to heighten the dramatic mood of the story."  Apollo also plays a lira da bracchio, and Midas, as yet with normal ears, looks straight at Pan.Midas or "Midas/Titian adopts the traditional melancholic's pose", which Titian would have known from Raphael's supposed portrait of Michelangelo as Heraclitus in The School of Athens, and Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I, not to mention the Schiavone.
The School of Athens Raphael Melencolia I Titian donkey Giulio Romano fresco Pergamon Stanza della Segnatura Pan Kensington Palace Royal Collection Louvre Andrea Schiavone Mantua Apollo lyre Midas Marsyas Michelangelo Heraclitus left Palazzo Te Hellenistic sculpture Albrecht Dürer