Sculpture of the Week: The Laocoön Group

Pope Julius II's vision of what the sculpture
would have resembled.

At the same time he stretched forth to tear the knots with his hands
his fillets soaked with saliva and black venom
at the same time he lifted to heaven horrendous cries:
like the bellowing when a wounded bull has fled from the altar
and has shaken the ill-aimed axe from its neck.

--Virgil, The Aeneid

Originally from a lost play by Sophocles, the story of Laocoön and his sons has been translated dozens of times and influenced the works of many Hellenistic Greek writers as well as their contemporary counterparts. The most well-known account of Laocoön comes from Virgil’s Aeneid who described the grisly death of brave Laocoön whose attempt to expose the trickery of the Trojan Horse (by piercing it with an spear) so angered Athena that she sent vicious serpents to strangle him and tear him to shreds, an act which also engulfed his sons.

Laocoön and his sons inspired many works of art—the most famous being the group of sculptures commonly called The Laocoön Group. The group is presently in the collection of the Vatican Museums. Given the age of the statue, there is much debate about its exact origins. Some believe it to have been a later copy of another sculpture created between 42 and 20 BCE. However, other scholars feel that the group was sculpted nearer to 160 BCE. So, let’s just say it was created sometime between 160 and 20 BCE. No matter how you look at it—that’s old. I’m always tickled when I hear people seriously refer to something in the U.S. as “ancient,” especially when they’re referring to an object from, say, the 1910’s. THIS is ancient.

Pliny, the ancient historian, suggested in his Natural History that the group was located for a time in the palace of Titus and that the statue was created from one unified piece of rock. We now know, however, that the statue was sculpted from individual stones for each figure and assembled. Others feel certain that the piece was sculpted as a commission by a wealthy Roman. This is also a matter of some debate. One thing we can be sure of is that the group was unearthed in 1506 and was put on display on the Belvedere Gardens of the Vatican by Pope Julius II.

The Group as seen in a photo dating to 1860
howing the Renaissance era arm replacements.

When the sculpture was found, various pieces of it were missing. Laocoön’s right arm was missing as was the portion of snake it held. Similarly, the arm of one child was broken off as was the hand of the other. Pope Julius—always up for a good time—held a contest to see which sculptor could create the best replacement limbs for the piece. The contest was to be judged by Raphael. Michelangelo (not one to keep silent about his opinions) insisted that Laocoön’s arm had to have been bent backward. The pope and Raphael disagreed, and, so an arm extended toward heaven in a heroic pose was chosen and added to the sculpture along with an new hand and a new arm for the youngsters.

In 1906, an archaeologist and art dealer, discovered a fragment of an ancient arm which he felt was a piece of the original arm of Laocoön. The piece of the arm was clearly bent backwards as Michelangelo had thought it should have been. The fragment did, indeed, turn out to be the only surviving chunk of Laocoön’s missing right arm. But, the Vatican tends to be busy. So, the arm sat in their warehouse until the 1950’s upon which time someone remembered it. The Sixteenth Century replacement limbs were removed and Laocoön’s right arm-piece was restored. The children were left in their original handless and armless state. In restoring the statue, art historians discovered that the sculpture was indeed created from several pieces of stone—which they promptly disassembled. In doing so, they realized that at one point, the group had been configured differently—the figures standing closer together. However, with the addition of the original arm, the group was restored to the composition in which it had been discovered in 1506.

The Sculpture as it is today with the original arm fragment
and the removal of the sons' newer limbs.

Many consider this sculpture to be one of the finest ever created. The looks of anguish on the faces of the figures challenge us to believe that it is stone and not flesh. The figures seem to move and have such a natural weight and presence that it’s difficult to imagine they could be anything less than real.