In the Dionysus Room there are statues of the Muses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. These patronesses of various sciences and arts were depicted in the form of beautiful young women with the corresponding attributes. Educated Romans decorated libraries with statues of the Muses.
The figure of the satyr Marsyas suspended from the trunk of a tree was part of a sculptural group – The Flaying of Marsyas – that also included a squatting slave sharpening a knife. Marsyas was punished in that way for daring to challenge Apollo himself to a competition of musical skills and losing.
Another exhibit that seems to have been part of a sculptural group of two figures is the Soranzo Eros, as it is known, which was acquired in 1851 from the collection of the Palazzo Soranzo in Venice.
