Laocoön and His Sons

The Laocoon Group in the Vatican Museums is the most important representation of the death throes Laocoön and his sons in the visual arts. The work has been particularly praised by Pliny the Elder in 1506 and gained importance after its rediscovery in the European spirit world. The sculpture of the sculptor Hagesandros, and Polydorus of Rhodes is Athanadoros get AD only in a marble copy from the second half of the 1st century BC or the beginning of the 1st century. The original was probably written around 200 BC, a bronze sculpture from Pergamon, which is not obtained.

The marble copy from the Roman period was found again on January 14, 1506, by de Felice Fredi in his vineyards near the ruins of the Golden House of Nero on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. For the men of the Renaissance, which had just begun to inspire for antiquity, the discovery was startling. On behalf of Pope Julius II, the architect Giuliano da Sangallo and the sculptor and painter Michelangelo Buonarroti were sent to de Fredi. With the words: "This is the Laocoon, Pliny mentions the " Sangallo is said to have confirmed the authenticity of the find. In March of the year 1506, the Laocoon group was handed over to the Pope, who took over in his personal possessions. The Finder has been granted as a reward, the customs revenues of the Porta San Giovanni in Rome, another reward of 1,500 ducats under the next pope and a final resting place in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitol. Since then, the group is in the Vatican Museums in Rome, with a brief interruption 1798-1815, when she was after the Treaty of Tolentino as war booty in Paris.

1905 was the right arm of Laocoon by Ludwig Pollak, an archaeologist and art dealer, and found the previously stretched arm was added in 1960 replaced by the angled elbow only. It also supplements with the sons were removed ( the right arm of the son to his right and the right hand of the son to his left ).

The Laocoon Group acquired an extraordinary influence on visual arts and art theory - they suggested, among other things in 1766 the poet Lessing to his treatise Laocoon or over the limits of painting and poetry to, in which he out worked the differences between visual art and literature. Even Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Goethe employed in own work decidedly with the Laocoon group.

" Laocoon was the artists in ancient Rome ebendas what he is us: the rule of Polykleitos; a perfect rule of art ... The general excellent characteristics of the Greek masterpieces is finally a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, both in the position as in the expression. Just as the depth of the sea always remains calm, the surface matter how raging, just shows the expression in the figures of the Greeks in all passions and set a great soul. This soul portrays itself in the face of Laocoon, and not in the face alone, in the most violent suffering. The pain, which discovers itself in all the muscles and tendons of the body and the one all alone, without looking at the face and other parts, believed to feel at the painfully retracted abdomen almost self, this pain, I say, yet manifests itself with no anger in the face and all over the position. He raises no terrible cry, as Virgil sings of his Laocoon. The opening of the mouth does not allow; rather, it is a fearful and beklemmtes sigh as it describes Sadolet. The pain of the body and the size of the soul are distributed throughout the construction of the figure with the same strength and weighed equally. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like Sophocles' Philoctetes. Misery concerns us even to the soul, but we wish to be able to as this great man endure the misery "

"I trust myself, therefore, again to repeat: that the group of the Laocoon in addition to all other recognized merits at the same time a pattern is of symmetry and multiplicity, of rest and motion, contrasts and stages transitions that together partly sensual, partly mentally present themselves to the observer, at the high pathos of the idea excite a pleasant sensation and ease the storm of suffering and passion with grace and beauty. "