Apollo as Victor over Pan

The subject is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, XI: 146-179. It depicts the flute playing contest between the god Apollo and the satyr Marsyas, which Marsyas ultimately loses. The painting shows the moments following the competition when Apollo furiously berates Midas, one of the contest's judges, for favoring the flute-playing ability of Marsyas over himself. Marsyas is presented in the canvas with human legs despite being a satyr.[6][7][8][9][10]

The canvas is Jordaens' interpretation of an earlier painting by Peter Paul Rubens entitled Apollo and Marsyas. Jordaens' painting of the Rubens canvas was then copied by Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, the Spanish Baroque painter and son-in-law of Diego Velázquez, the royal painter for King Philip IV of Spain. As chamberlain of the palace, Velázquez was responsible for acquisition, management and distribution of royal collections of paintings, tapestries, and sculpture which allowed him to decorate the Pieza Principal chambers of the Royal Alcázar of Madrid with Mazo's copy of the original Jordaens painting. Velázquez then depicted the copy of Apollo as Victor over Pan in the background of his own canvas, Las Meninas, which has been recognized as one of the most important paintings in Western art history, effectively creating a painting within a painting.[11][12][13][14][15]

In 2014 the Museo del Prado loaned the painting, along with nine other works from its collection by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Frans Francken the Younger and others, to the Museo Carlos de Amberes for the period of one year.[1]