[Marsyas's] sinews lie bare, his veins throb and quiver with no skin to cover them... Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.389-90 (1)
Merciful to others and merciless only to itself, a lowly creature's born, who with pain and sorrow clothes another's hand and strips off its own skin, and only through death might be called truly born. Michelangelo, "D'altrui pietoso e sol di se spietato," ca. 1535 (2)
Disaffected with the Medici and sought after by the newly elected Farnese pope, ...