Arctinus of Miletus

The famous Laocoön statue was discovered in 1506 under the remains of the Baths of Titus, in the Esquiline Hills, and—aside from an interval when it was seized by Napoleon's forces and displayed in Paris—has since been housed in the Vatican ever since.

In his Historia Naturalis, Pliny described a statue in the palace of the Emperor Titus as "a work superior to any painting and any bronze" ("opus omnibus et picturae et statuariae artis praeferendum"), and attributed it to three Rhodian sculptors, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus. However, he also stated that the work was sculpted from one block of marble.^{[note 1]} That is not the case with the statue discovered in 1506. This statue of Laocoön and his sons is made up of five blocks, and, as Fred Albertson notes, "the back of the altar is Luna [Carrara marble], while the remainder is of Greek marble".^{[note 2]} Not noticing that a statue is made of more than one block of marble may not be all that surprising, but not noticing that it is made up of two types of marble is. Either Pliny never saw the sculpture itself and relied on (hyperbolic) reports, or he is talking about a different statue. Given the correlation between Pliny's report of a statue in the palace of Titus and the location of the find, the former seems most probable.^{[note 3]}

The Vatican Laocoön was for a long time associated with the Pergamene school and the reign of Eumenes II (182–165 BCE). It has, for example, certain stylistic features in common with the frieze decorating the Altar of Zeus and Athena Nikephoros at Pergamon. These include an emphasis on dramatic action, twisting figures, diagonal (almost geometrical) patterns, contrast of light and shadow, and exaggerated musculature.^{[note 4]}

Some believe that the Rhodian sculptors copied from a bronze sculpture from the Pergamon school, and so the Vatican Laocoön may be of a later period. Bernard Andreae, for example, argues that the awkward rendering of the elder son's cloak in the otherwise fairly realistic composition indicates that this element is actually a copyist's strut, supporting a marble translation of an original bronze; the position of the snakes can also, he observes, be seen in this light. Andreae bases his argument that the marble group is a copy of a bronze on Pliny's description of it as "opus omnibus et picturae et staturiae artis praeferendum". Pliny's use of the word statuariae, he states, corresponds to the Latin statuaria ars, which was rendered in Italian as arte statuaria and therefore the eqivalent of scultura. Statuaria ars, Andreae claims, refers exclusively to metal, not to stone sculpture. From this, he proposes that Pliny was favourably comparing the sculpture in marble to all renderings of the same subject in painting or bronze, and that he was aware that he was commenting on a copy of a composition already produced in other media.^{[note 5]}

This seems cogent enough: that ars statuaria refers only to metal sculpture has a great deal of support, both within Andreae's book, and amongst other commentators on Pliny's text. However, this definition is not universally accepted. For example, discussing Pliny's division of the plastic arts into fusoria, plastica and scultura, Rudolf Wittkower adheres to the definition of scultura as "the art of working in stone".^{[note 6]} Moreover, as Andreae's Brunilde Ridgway remarks, it is unlikely "that Pliny would have alluded so ambiguously to the existence of replicas, since elsewhere, as Andreae also mentions, he quite openly speaks of copies being made of paintings and other works".^{[note 7]} Moreover, Andreae's argument that struts indicate a metal origin is at odds with his earlier article, published jointly with Baldassare Conticello, in which it is acknowledged that struts may exist as part of a marble group without any suggestion of this group being a copy of a bronze.^{[note 8]} Ridgway, discussing the style of the Scylla group found at Sperlonga, also says that she sees no reason "why a quadrangular section to a strut should be any more indicative of a metal original than any other form of artificial support".^{[note 9]}

If the Vatican Laocoön is a copy, however, it may not have been the only replica. Ridgeway notes that another, apparently larger, Laocoön statue was identified in fragments (a foot and an arm) discovered in 1588 under the pavement of S. Pudenziana in Rome. Ridgeway notes that it had probably been a feature of the 2nd century baths over which the church of S. Pudenziana was built. Unfortunately these pieces were stolen and remain untraced, so their comparability to the Vatican Laocoön (or indeed the Pergamene group) is today unverifiable.^{[note 10]}

In 1957, several groups of sculptures were found at Sperlonga (dated to between 50 BCE and 26 CE). Inscribed on the Scylla group were three names: Athanodoros, son of Agesandros; Agesandros, son of Paionios; and Polydoros, son of Polidoros, from Rhodes. The names are a close match for the Rhodian sculptors to whom Pliny attributed the sculpture of the Laocoön, although he claims that Polydorus and Athenodorus are the sons of Agesander. The order of names is also different, which may be significant in terms of implied seniority. These differences indicate that at least one or two of the sculptors named on the Scylla group and in Pliny may have shared names but have been of different generations. Moreover, as Albertson has argued, "A technical analysis of the Vatican Laocoon suggests that it is not by those same hands which carved the Polyphemos and Scylla groups".^{[note 1]}

As with the Pergamene association, some scholars have drawn on the Sperlonga group to date the Laocoön sculpture, but the question over the identity of the sculptors makes these attempts contentious. Given the remaining questions, debates about the dating of the sculpture are likely to continue, allowing only a very broad range from 2nd to 1st century BCE.

In terms of the statue's grouping, Laocoön is flanked by his two sons and in the coils of the serpents, as he is in the much earlier Etruscan scarab, a correlation that itself suggests an earlier prototype. Overall, these groupings suggest a punishment of death extending from the priest to his sons, and all in the same moment. Within the Vatican Laocoön's grouping, however, escape still appears to be possible for the elder son. With the two serpents concentrating on the other two victims, he has one foot free and the other almost so. If this implication was intended, it suggests the earliest known version of Laocoön's story—that by Arctinus—in which only one of the sons is killed. The influence of Sophocles's version of Laocoön's story is suggested in the wreath that Laocoön wears, the wreath of Apollo's priest.

The arrangement of the group is distinctly different from that described by Virgil, in which the serpents first devour the limbs of Laocoön's sons and then attack the priest when he comes to their aid. Virgil's serpents then coil around Laocoön's waist and throat, their heads rising high above him. In this sculpture, the serpents hold father and sons in their coils, but they appear to be killing by their bites, not by constriction. Their vicious, devouring, hound-like jaws are embedded in flesh, not rising above the group. If the sculptors had known Virgil's version or Virgil had known this statue (or its prototype), they do not register their knowledge in their respective arrangements.

Whatever version of events the sculptors of the Laocoön had in mind, in creating this work they seem to have been at least as much interested in their theme as a pretext for an interesting group of figures, as they were in the details story itself. The group of three struggling with attacking serpents lends itself to the baroque energy exhibited by the sculpture. Although the artists have incorporated cloaks (one over the altar, and one over the elder son's left shoulder), their emphasis is on the bodies of the three characters, showing off their skill in rendering muscle. The coils of the serpents are rhythmic, decorative even, contrasting the more angular figures of Laocoön and his sons, which are tensed with fear and pain.

Although the Laocoön sculpture was admired in its own time, and was the subject of much high praise after its rediscovery, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries it was criticised as ostentatious but unsatisfying.^{[note 12]} Heinrich Brunn, Alexander Murray, Lucy Mitchell, and Ernest Gardner, for example, all viewed it as deficient in its explanation of the scene and its emotional effect.^{[note 13]} More hostile still was the reaction of Edmund von Mach (1903), which seems to be based almost solely on a judgement of the piece within a Christian context:

Nor is there any redeeming feature in suggested justice. Those familiar with the ancient traditions remember that Laokoon had to suffer not because he was wicked or careless, but because he had done his duty as seer, and had warned the Trojans. . . . The thought of the group is ignoble, for it teaches the injustice of God.^{[note 14]}

Often considered an important factor bearing on the relation of the Laocoön sculpture to other depictions of Laocoön in visual art is its two-dimensionality. As Benjamin Rowland writes, it "is in reality a sort of high relief, so obviously it is meant to be seen from a single frontal point of view".^{[note 15]} The Laocoön sculpture gives only an illusion of three-dimensionality, and is in fact einansichtig—that is, it has only one true viewing angle.^{[note 16]} Before around 500 BCE, sculptures were restricted of the tools available (the punch and mallet), and the convention of working with regular blocks of stone one side at a time: in combination, the effect was that the shape of the block was in some manner always retained, and sculptures only presented thir meaning when viewed from the front. The sculptors of the Laocoön were not restricted in the same manner: they could work with chisels and drills that allowed undercutting, and in turn freer movement and forms and three-dimensionality. Yet even later sculpture was still in many respects two-dimensional. This seems also to be linked to the recurrent trend in Roman decorative sculpture, of gearing pieces to architectural niches, a habit possibly descended from the punch and mallet times when it made sense not to offer a view of a work from all angles. The creation of sculptures designed to be seen from all angles, in the round, is a relatively modern concept, in contrast to which classical sculpture is often found to be two-dimensional. Perhaps in a nod to the two-diminsionality of the Vatican Laocoön, it sits forward of, but remains visually connected to, a niche in the Cortille de Belvedere.

Note 1. Pliny, Natural History, Books 36–37, ed. and trans. D. E. Eichholz (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1962), 36.37–38 (pp. 28–31). [back to text]

Note 2. Fred C. Albertson, 'Pliny and the Vatican Laocoon', Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts 100 (1983): 133–40, at p. 138. [back to text]

Note 3. For arguments that Pliny is speaking about a different statue, see Albertson, p. 136; and Giuseppe Lugli, 'La Domus Titi e la scopeta del Laocoonte', Archeologia Classica 10 (1958), pp. 197–. [back to text]

Note 4. See Albertson, p. 134. [back to text]

Note 5. Bernard Andreae, Laokoon und die Gründung Roms (Kulturgeschichte der antiken Welt 39; Philipp von Zabern: Mainz am Rhein, 1988), p. 35.[back to text]

Note 6. Rudolf Wittkower, Sculpture: Processes and Principles (1977; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), p. 30.[back to text]

Note 7. Brunilde S. Ridgway, "Laokoon and the Foundation of Rome" (review of Laokoon und die Gründung Roms by Bernard Andreae), Journal of Roman Archaeology 2 (1989): pp. 171–191, at p.180.[back to text]

Note 8. Bernard Andreae and Baldassare Conticello, Skylla und Charybdis. Zur Skylla-Gruppe von Sperlonga (Akademie der Wissenschaft und Literatur, Mainz, Abhandlung. 14, 1987), p. 14.[back to text]

Note 9. Ridgway, p. 179.[back to text]

Note 10. Ridgeway, pp. 178–77 [back to text]

Note 11. See Albertson, p. 136. [back to text]

Note 12. See Richard Foerster, "Laokoon", Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts, 21 (1906): 1–32 at p. 1. Margaret Bieber notes that this was not the case in nineteenth-century France, where "The old admiration persisted". Bieber, Laocoon: The Influence of the Group Since its Rediscovery (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, rev. ed. 1967), p. 32. [back to text]

Note 13. Heinrich Brunn, Geschichte der Grieschischen Künstler (1852; Stuttgart, 1889), p. 343, no. 491; A. S. Murray, A History of Greek Sculpture, vol. 2 (London, 1883), pp. 369&ndas;70; Lucy M. Mitchell, A History of Ancient Sculpture, vol. 2 (New York, 1883), p. 605; Ernest Arthur Gardner, A Handbook of Greek Sculpture (1911; London: Macmillan and Co., 1920), pp. 507–8. [back to text]

Note 14. Edmund von Mach, Greek Sculpture: Its Spirit and Principles (Boston, New York, Chicago and London: Ginn & Co., 1903), pp. 311–12. [back to text]

Note 15. Benjamin Rowland, Jr., The Classical Tradition in Western Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 47. [back to text]

Note 16. See Gerhard Krahmer, "Die einansichtige Gruppe und die späthellenitsiche Kunst", Nachrichten der Gelehrten Gesellschaft zu Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse (1927), no. 1: pp. 52–91; Tafeln I–IV. [back to text]