Laocoon1.0006_ElGreco

Laocoon1.0006_ElGreco

Vatican Laocoon
Ver. Aen. 2.40-56, 190-240
Apollodorus Libr. E. 5.17-18

El Greco, 1541-1614, “Laocoön,” ca. 1610-1614, oil on canvas, Washington, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection 1946.18.1.

The painting depicts the mythical death of Laocoon and his sons. They are being strangled by serpents as punishment for speaking out against the Trojan Horse. Laocoon and his sons are destroyed by the murderous serpents, as in classical myth; however, here the backdrop is readily recognizable as Toledo. The transposition from Troy to the artist’s home is all the more poignant because this is El Greco’s only surviving mythological subject.

El Greco, Laocoon

Colin Eisler. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford: Phaidon, for Kress Foundation. 1977, pp. 195-201-ill.

Tomas J. Sienkewicz. Classical Gods and Heroes in the National Gallery of Art. Washington DC: University Press of America, 1983, p. 18-ill.

John Walker. National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. New York: Abrams, 1984, p. 240-ill.

Rosa Lopez Torrijos. La mitologia en la pintura espanola del Siglo de Oro. Madrid: Catedra, 1985, p. 412 no. 53 - ill.

Bieber, Margarete. 1942. Laocoön; the influence of the group since its rediscovery. Rev. ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press).

Two further treatments of the subject known (in inventory at artist's death), untraced.

Slide by CB.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.