CIRCA 1550, URBINO OR CASTEL DURANTE

The story of Apollo and Marsyas is told by Ovid in Book 6 of the Metamorphoses, lines 382-400 and is depicted on this dish in two parts, firstly with the Satyr seated playing the pipes to the left and Apollo with his lyre seated beside him and to the right with a scene of Apollo, the victor, flaying Marsyas with a knife. An Urbino dish decorated with Apollo and Marsyas is in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, see Johanna Lessmann, Italienische Majolika, Brunswick, 1979, p. 193, no. 178; another example, attributed to Sforza di Marcantonio, while working in Urbino or Pesaro, is illustrated by Timothy Wilson, Italian Maiolica of the Renaissance, Milan, 1996, p. 255, no. 107. A third dish painted with a version of the same subject was sold in these Rooms on 17 November 2009, lot 4.