Laocoon Group
The group of Laocoon is an ancient Greek sculpture preserved in the museum Pio-Clementino at the Vatican. It is the priest Trojan Laocoon and his two son attacked by snakes, including scene described in the Odyssey and the Aeneid. This is one of the most representative works of Hellenistic art.
Summary |
History
The group was discovered at Rome on 14 January 1506 , near the "Seven Rooms" (actually, the tanks of the Baths of Trajan ) built on the site of the former Domus Aurea of Nero , located on the Esquiline , near the Coliseum with that mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History :
"(...) The Laocoon, which is located in the residence of the Emperor Titus, it is preferable to any painting and any sculpture. On a single block of stone Agsandros great artists, and Athnodoros Polydoros of Rhodes Laocoon realized, his son and nodes beautiful snakes, with the consent of the idea . "
This admiration is shared widely by the Moderns: in 1515 , Francis I of France demand the Pope, in vain. In 1520 , the Monarch renewed its request, this time a bronze copy. To satisfy, Leo X in order Florentine sculptor Baccio Bandinelli a marble copy, it will eventually keep him. Francis I finally get satisfaction by sending in the 1540s , Primaticcio to Rome to make casts of ancient works , Herder , Goethe , Novalis or Schopenhauer have commented on each sculpture. It was much the same point of departure for their aesthetic reflection. Many artists have delivered their own interpretation: as Titian and William Blake but also Max Ernst. In the album of Asterix and the Laurel Wreath (Plate 12a, box 3), one of the slaves in Tifus flexes its muscles posing of Laocoon, ropes snakes listed here.
Allocation
Since the Renaissance , is attributed to the group Agsandros , Athenodorus and Polydore , of which four are known monuments discovered in the cave of Sperlonga , close to Rome in 1957. It knows no other ancient versions. It was long believed that it was an original of the Hellenistic period. However, it appeared that the marble of the altar on which sits Laocoon is Italian marble dating back at least the second half of the first century AD. AD : so this is a copy or adaptation. We also know, through the testimony of Sperlonga, the three were Rhodes specialized in the reproduction of works subject to the Hellenistic mythological . It is unclear to what extent they could improvise in their work copied. However, this discovery comes not only shift the problem of dating the original.
The question of dating is not internal to the history of art, but also impacts on the history of literature. In fact, Virgil was the first writer to dwell on this episode . The illustrious group does the Aeneid? Instead, he has inspired Virgil's Laocoon? Virgil represents the Laocoon as an innocent victim: when he rightly warns the Trojans , he was dismissed as a nuisance by the gods. In other traditions, like that of Sophocles in his tragedy lost Laocoon is punished by Apollo for being married and having violated his duty of celibacy: he is condemned to see his son torn apart by snakes. In a Hellenistic poet, Euphorion, Laocoon is also killed by snakes. Greek sculptors being fond of tragic themes, it seems that rather then the Laocoon, which is represented in stone.
In 2005, the American art historian Lynn Catterson when communicating with the Italian Academy of Columbia University, attributed the work to Michelangelo's famous for having made numerous false . She claimed to have many justifications including a drawing by Michelangelo showing the torso held by the Ashmolean Museum
Notes
- a , b and c Haskell and Penny, p. 259.
- Jerome J. Pollitt, "Introduction: masters and masterworks, in O. Palagia and JJ Pollitt (eds.), Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 3.
- Pliny the Elder , Natural History See also
Related articles
Bibliography
- (De) Bernard Andreae , und die Grndung Laokoon Roma, ed. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, 1988 ( ISBN 3-8053-0989-9 ).
- Elizabeth Dcultot, Jacques Le Rider and Queyrel Francis (ed.), The Laocoon, history and reception, Germanic Review International, Vol. 19 (2003), Presses Universitaires de France.
- Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny (trans. Francis Lissarague) For the love of the antique. The Greco-Roman statuary and European taste [Taste & the Antique. The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 "], Hachette, coll." Library of Archaeology, Paris, 1988 (original edition 1981) ( ISBN 2-01-011642-9 ) , No. 121, p. 259-263.
- Goethe , "On the Laocoon," in Writings on Art, introduction of Tzvetan Todorov, translation and notes by Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Garnier Flammarion, 1996.
- (In) Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway , Hellenistic Sculpture, Vol. III: The Styles of ca. 100-31 BC, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2003 ( ISBN 0-299-17710-6 ) , P. 87-90.
- RRR Smith (trans. Anne Marie Duprat), Hellenistic Sculpture ["Hellenistic Sculpture"], Thames & Hudson, et al. "The Universe of Art", Paris, 1996 (original edition 1991) ( ISBN 2-87811 -107 to 9 ) , P. 108-109.
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