The Laocoön Group
520 years ago, in 1505, a 30-year-old Michelangelo was summoned to Rome to work on the tomb of Pope Julius II, a somewhat elderly Pope who was keen to make arrangements for the end of his life. Michelangelo’s move to the city meant that, in 1506, he could be present at one of the most exciting discoveries a Renaissance sculptor could hope for - the chance excavation of a legendary antique statue, a long-lost masterpiece known at the time only through written sources.
In the middle ages and early Renaissance, the statue of Laocoön (lac-oh-wan) was a lost legend, known only through the writings of Pliny the Elder. In Pliny’s Natural History, a sort of proto-encyclopedia written in the late 70s C.E., he describes the statue as a masterpiece to surpass all other artworks, and records that it was made by three sculptors from Rhodes, Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus.They lived and worked in the decades spanning the turn of the Common Era (C.E), giving a rough date of production to the statue, which Pliny said was housed in Rome, in the palace of Emperor Titus (39-81 C.E).
The sculpture was known to show Laocoön, a Trojan priest, but no physical description of the statue was given. No one knew the size, pose, number of figures or narrative details of the sculpture, at least not until a February day in 1506.
The discovery was made by chance, by workers (possibly digging foundations for a house) in a vineyard on the Oppian Hill in the eastern part of Rome. When it became clear that the buried object was a large, marble statue, they alerted the highest authority, Pope Julius II, who sent his court artists to investigate. Michelangelo went to the site along with fellow artists, including Giuliano da Sangallo, whose eleven year old son was also in attendance. According to the latter’s account, his father immediately recognised the emerging statue as the Laocoön mentioned by Pliny.
Laocoön was a priest from Troy who, along with his two young sons, was fatally attacked by serpents sent by the gods. There are varying accounts as to why Laocoön was subjected to this torturous death. One is that Laocoön saw through the trickery of the Greeks’ wooden horse and recognised the offering as a military maneuver. Striking the horse with his spear, he attempted to convince his fellow Trojans of the ruse, but was unsuccessful, and the ensuing divine punishment (sent by Athena, to whom the horse was supposedly an offering) only went to cement his error in their eyes. In another account, Laocoön’s punishment was sent by Poseidon owing to Laocoön having brought his wife into the temple, or by Apollo as a consequence of ignoring his priestly vow of celibacy.
Laocoön’s struggle against the serpents is not a fair fight, but Laocoön does not succumb easily and it is this moment which is captured by the sculptors, resulting in a work of high physical and emotional intensity. The three figures in various poses and the two serpents weaving between them create a frantic, writhing mass, while Laocoon’s prominent muscles and veins convey the straing of his desperate efforts to free himself. It is a moment of action and movement which has been captured and fixed by the sculptors, bound forever by the unyielding marble just as Laocoön was bound and constrained by the serpents.
The intense emotion expressed by Laocoön's face and his dramatically thrown-back head is mesmerising to the onlooker. Some have interpreted it as an embodiment of stoicism, with Laocoön bravely enduring his torment, while others see it as one of the earliest and most stark representations of true agony and despair. Many onlookers find themselves caught between being drawn in by the beauty of the statue whilst flinching at the suffering and tragedy of its subject matter. Perhaps it is this duality which causes so many to be mesmerised by the ensemble.
The discovery of the statue generated great excitement during a period of time in Italy (and Europe) where there was a huge appetite for all things Greek and Roman. Generations of artists and sculptors came to sketch the sculpture and learn from its form, proportions and arrangement. Some turned their drawings into etchings which could be reproduced by the growing printing industry and distributed cheaply to a wide audience. This, along with the statue’s public display - it was purchased by Pope Julius II, who had it displayed in a courtyard in the Vatican - encouraged public engagement with it and contributed to its iconic status.
The statue can still be seen in the Vatican today, in the Pio Clementino Museum, and casts and copies of it exist in several other galleries and museums, such as the Ashmolean in Oxford or at the Royal Academy in London.