Laocoön and His Sons
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group, has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and put on public display in the Vatican Museums, where it remains today. The statue is very likely the same one praised in the highest terms by Pliny the Elder, the main Roman writer on art, who attributed it to Greek sculptors but did not say when it was created. The figures are nearly life-sized, with the entire group measuring just over in height. The sculpture depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents.
The Laocoön Group has been called "the prototypical icon of human agony" in Western art. Unlike the agony often portrayed in Christian art depicting the Passion of Jesus and martyrs, the suffering here suggests neither redemption nor reward. The agony is conveyed through the contorted facial expressions, particularly Laocoön's bulging eyebrows, which were noted by Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne as physiologically impossible. These expressions are mirrored in the struggling bodies, especially Laocoön's, with every part of his body shown straining.
Pliny attributed the work, then in the palace of Emperor Titus, to three Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus, but he did not mention the date or patron. In style it is considered "one of the finest examples of the Hellenistic baroque" and certainly in the Greek tradition. However, its origin is uncertain, as it is not known if it is an original work or a copy of an earlier bronze sculpture. Some believe it to be a copy of a work from the early Imperial period, while others think it to be an original work from the later period, continuing the Pergamene style of some two centuries earlier. Regardless, it was probably commissioned for a wealthy Roman's home, possibly from the Imperial family. The dates suggested for the statue range from 200 BC to the 70s AD, with a Julio-Claudian date now being the preferred option.
Despite being in mostly excellent condition for an excavated sculpture, the group is missing several parts and underwent several ancient modifications, as well as restorations since its excavation. The statue is currently on display in the Museo Pio-Clementino, which is part of the Vatican Museums.
Subject
The story of Laocoön, a Trojan priest, came from the Greek Epic Cycle on the Trojan Wars, though it is not mentioned by Homer. It had been the subject of a tragedy, now lost, by Sophocles and was mentioned by other Greek writers, though the events around the attack by the serpents vary considerably. The most famous account of these is now in Virgil's Aeneid, but this dates from between 29 and 19 BC, which is possibly later than the sculpture. However, some scholars see the group as a depiction of the scene as described by Virgil.In Virgil, Laocoön was a priest of Poseidon who was killed with both his sons after attempting to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear. In Sophocles, on the other hand, he was a priest of Apollo, who should have been celibate but had married. The serpents killed only the two sons, leaving Laocoön himself alive to suffer. In other versions he was killed for having had sex with his wife in the temple of Poseidon, or simply making a sacrifice in the temple with his wife present. In this second group of versions, the snakes were sent by Poseidon and in the first by Poseidon and Athena, or Apollo, and the deaths were interpreted by the Trojans as proof that the horse was a sacred object. The two versions have rather different morals: Laocoön was either punished for doing wrong, or for being right.
The snakes are depicted as both biting and constricting, and are probably intended as venomous, as in Virgil. Pietro Aretino thought so, praising the group in 1537:
... the two serpents, in attacking the three figures, produce the most striking semblances of fear, suffering and death. The youth embraced in the coils is fearful; the old man struck by the fangs is in torment; the child who has received the poison, dies.
In at least one Greek telling of the story the older son is able to escape, and the composition seems to allow for that possibility.
History
Ancient times
The style of the work is agreed to be that of the Hellenistic "Pergamene baroque" which arose in Greek Asia Minor around 200 BC, and whose best known undoubtedly original work is the Pergamon Altar, dated –160 BC, and now in Berlin.File:Fregio della gigantomachia 02.JPG|thumb|right|Alcyoneus, Athena, Gaia, and Nike, detail of the Gigantomachy frieze, Pergamon Altar, Pergamon museum, Berlin
The figure of Alcyoneus is shown in a pose and situation which is very similar to those of Laocoön, though the style is "looser and wilder in its principles" than the altar.
The execution of the Laocoön is extremely fine throughout, and the composition very carefully calculated, even though it appears that the group underwent adjustments in ancient times. The two sons are rather small in scale compared to their father, but this adds to the impact of the central figure. The fine white marble used is often thought to be Greek, but has not been identified by analysis.
Pliny
In Pliny's survey of Greek and Roman stone sculpture in his encyclopedic Natural History, he says:....in the case of several works of very great excellence, the number of artists that have been engaged upon them has proved a considerable obstacle to the fame of each, no individual being able to engross the whole of the credit, and it being impossible to award it in due proportion to the names of the several artists combined. Such is the case with the Laocoön, for example, in the palace of the Emperor Titus, a work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of the art of painting or of statuary. It is sculptured from a single block, both the main figure as well as the children, and the serpents with their marvellous folds. This group was made in concert by three most eminent artists, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes.
It is generally accepted that this is the same work as is now in the Vatican. It is now very often thought that the three Rhodians were copyists, perhaps of a bronze sculpture from Pergamon, created around 200 BC. It is noteworthy that Pliny does not address this issue explicitly, in a way that suggests "he regards it as an original". Pliny states that it was located in the palace of the emperor Titus, who reigned from 79 to 81 AD, and it is possible that it remained in the same place until 1506. He also asserts that it was carved from a single piece of marble, though the Vatican work comprises at least seven interlocking pieces. The phrase translated above as "in concert" is regarded by some as referring to their commission rather than the artists' method of working, giving in Nigel Spivey's translation: " at the behest of council designed a group...", which Spivey takes to mean that the commission was by Titus, possibly even advised by Pliny among other savants.
Pliny's description of the lost Laocoön in his Historia Naturalis briefly mentions the dramatic essence of the sculpture, rather than its specific sculptural form: "Laocoon, his sons and the wonderful coils of the snake were carved from a single block". It is not often mentioned in the literature that at least four other ancient sculptures of Laocoön's tortuous death were unearthed in Rome during the sixteenth century, in addition to the Laocoön Group in the Vatican. Indeed, in the mid-1550s Benedetto Egio, a member of the antiquarian circle in Rome, recorded the discovery of a Laocoön sculpture at the site of the ancient Baths that he believed was the ‘true’ lost sculpture described by Pliny. Since then, others have raised the possibility that the Vatican's Laocoön Group is a Renaissance forgery, perhaps created by the young Michelangelo Buonarroti as a way of proving that he had surpassed his ancient masters. Vasari tells us that Michelangelo created a forged antiquity that was itself unearthed in a vineyard in Rome. Ettlinger and Jelbert note that, unlike all the other existing ancient depictions of Laocoön, in the Laocoön Group he is not depicted in the traditional sacrificial pose, which would have been appropriate for a priest in the act of sacrificing a bull. The extreme emotion etched into the priest's excessively contorted face is even more marked than the exaggerated expression of the defeated giant on the Pergamon Altar, a detail that could indicate a Renaissance forgery. Catterson points out that the Laocoön Group was made from seven separate blocks, instead of the single block described by Pliny, and notes Michelangelo's purchase of excess marble and substantial bank account deposits that remain unaccounted for. These various anomalies remain part of the ongoing academic debate.
The same three artists' names generally attributed to the Vatican's Laocoön Group, though in a different order, with the names of their fathers, are inscribed on one of the sculptures at Tiberius's villa at Sperlonga, but it seems likely that not all the three masters were the same individuals. Though broadly similar in style, many aspects of the execution of the two groups are drastically different, with the Laocoon group of much higher quality and finish.
Some scholars used to think that honorific inscriptions found at Lindos in Rhodes dated Agesander and Athenodoros, recorded as priests, to a period after 42 BC, making the years 42 to 20 BC the most likely date for the Laocoön group's creation. However the Sperlonga inscription, which also gives the fathers of the artists, makes it clear that at least Agesander is a different individual from the priest of the same name recorded at Lindos, though very possibly related. The names may have recurred across generations, a Rhodian habit, within the context of a family workshop. Altogether eight "signatures" of an Athenodoros are found on sculptures or bases for them, five of these from Italy. Some, including that from Sperlonga, record his father as Agesander. The whole question remains the subject of academic debate.