Marsyas: Pride Punished

The Vignacce Marsyas was uncovered in 2009 at Villa delle Vignacce, a four-year excavation conducted by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina in agreement with the US non-profit American Institute for Roman Culture AIRC with international students.Since its discovery, the Marsyas statue has been in the hands of the City of Rome and conservation consortium Conart for a restoration program which included revealing precious eye details such as inlaid white glass paste, colored iris and bronze eye-lid rimming as well as identifying the provenance via its colored marble.

The 149 centimeter-high statue depicts the violent end to a Greek myth, when the satyr and would-be musician Marsyas is tied to a tree and flayed after losing a music battle to Apollo. In the Vignacce Marsyas, the bloodied skin is rendered by head, arms, torso and legs of a veiny red marble, while hands and feet would have been white marble. Unique to other figurative antiquities, the Vignacce Marsyas is almost entirely intact, missing only one hand and both feet.

The Vignacce Marsyas is on display in the Capitoline Museums' Palazzo dei Conservatori next to the Marsyas the Horti of Maecenas through February 1, 2015 before moving to its permanent location at the Capitoline's Centrale Montemartini location.