La Punizione di Marsia: un rilievo di Silvio Cosini e il sepolcro di Jacopo Sansovino a Venezia

This article focuses on the discovery, in a private collection, of a relief depicting the Flaying of Marsyas, which can be attributed to Silvio Cosini (around 1500-1545), a Pisan sculptor and pupil of Michelangelo. First of all, this discovery represents an important addition to our knowledge of this virtuoso master of marble and stucco; it also allows us to further argue the attribution to Cosini of the relief representing the Arcadia theme, which constitutes the central part of the tomb of the poet Jacopo Sannazaro, in Naples. This complex project was supervised by Giovan Angelo Montorsoli – also a pupil of Buonarroti – with the collaboration, among others, of Bartolomeo Ammannati. The Flaying of Marsyas can be dated to the 1530s and was probably made to decorate the tomb of his friend, the sculptor Jacopo Sansovino: as stated in his testament, dated 1533, Sansovino had entrusted Cosini and his brother Vincenzo to realize his own funerary monument in marble, destined for the Florentine chapel in the church of the Frari in Venice. However, we know nothing of these sculptures, and it has been suggested that they were never installed. The iconographic analysis of the relief presented here, as well as its fortune in Venice around 1540, in the context of Sansovino and other Florentine artists active in the city, seems to reinforce the hypothesis that the relief was made for Sansovino’s tomb. The comparison with both ancient and modern literary and figurative sources is also discussed, particularly with regard to the reference, both in the Arcadia and in the Flaying of Marsyas, to the famous group of the Laocoon which allows to establish a dialogue with other contemporary masters, such as Michelangelo and Baccio Bandinelli, who were interested in the study of ancient sculpture.