The Judgement of Midas. The Musical Contest between Apollo and Marsyas

The Judgement of Midas at the Statens Museum for Kunst, painted around 1507, depicts the mythological music contest that ended with Midas receiving donkey's ears for preferring Pan's music to Apollo's. Cima treats this classical subject with his distinctive luminous landscape setting. This work falls in the decades immediately around 1500, when Renaissance ideals of harmony and classical order were being synthesised across Europe. Cima da Conegliano, active in Venice and his native Conegliano from the 1480s until around 1517, was the most accomplished Venetian follower of Giovanni Bellini in the generation before Giorgione and Titian transformed the tradition. His cool precise light, his characteristic Veneto landscape backgrounds, and his composed figure types gave his altarpieces and devotional panels a quality of contemplative clarity that served the devotional needs of the churches and private patrons throughout northeastern Italy who commissioned him. This work demonstrates the consistent quality that made him one of the most trusted religious painters in the Venetian world.

The mythological scene is set within a detailed landscape that reflects Cima's exceptional skill in integrating figures with natural settings. The warm palette and precise rendering characterize his classical narrative style.