The Flaying of Marsyas, oil on canvas, 81 x 106 cm, framed

Giulio Carpioni numbers among the most important Venetian painters of the 17th Century. He was a student of Alessandro Varotari, called Il Padovanino, who introduced the young artist to Titian’s early work. But Carpioni was also influenced by the Venetian paintings of Carlo Saraceni and Jean Leclerc. Around 1631, Carpioni travelled to Bergamo in the company of Varotari, where he came into contact with the Lombard school of painting. On his return to Venice, he met Pietro della Vecchia. Carpioni’s art was also under the influence of the etchings of Simone Cantarini and Odoardo Fialetti, as well as Poussin’s bacchantic scenes, which the artist came to know through the etchings by Pietro Testa.

Carpioni is documented in Vicenza in 1638, where he was to live, except for short interruptions, until his death in 1674. At that time Vicenza was dominated by the Baroque art of Francesco Maffei, whose influence Carpioni could hardly avoid. Only after Maffei had left for Padua in 1657 did Carpioni develop an individual style of his own, and one of the most prolific periods in the artist’s career began. His bacchanals and the motif of the flaying of Marsyas may be regarded as his most original inventions: although still committed to Titian, Carpioni reinterpreted his model. Compared to Poussin’s Arcadian world, Carpioni’s pictures are less heroic, but display a dream-like quality, while some of his figures show caricature-like traits.