LaocoonANCIENT

Laocoon Group, Vatican Museums, Belvedere Court, Pio-Clementino Inv. 1059-1064-1067

The marble sculpture group now in the Vatican Museums was discovered in situ within Nero's Golden House on 14 January 1506. It may well be the same piece described anciently by Pliny the Elder (Hist. Nat. 36.4) as the work of Rhodian artisans Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydoros. However, this group is not carved "from a single block of marble" as Pliny claims the Laocoon he knew to be.

The image of Laocoon's mortal struggle is classical on many levels and often adapted. The image appears to be iconic elsewhere in first-century, in the House of Menander at Pompeii (click). Three landmark treatises from German enlightenment attest to the mythological utility in the hands of serious thinkers: Winckelmann (1754), Lessing (1766), Goethe (1798). Graphic imitations range from sublime to ridiculous: e.g.
El Greco,
Locher,
Daumier,
Berryman,
Van Mieris,
Titian,
Addams,and more