8The Laocoon: a masterpiece of classical sculpture

One of the unmissable works of your tour of the Vatican Museums is certainly the statuary group of Laocoonte, one of the most famous masterpieces of the classical world, preserved in the Cortile Ottagono.

The work was found in 1506 on the Esquiline hill, arousing great interest and clamor also in the young Michelangelo and in his patron, Pope Julius II, who immediately decided to buy the sculpture. From the time the marble group was identified with the masterpiece carved by the three Rhodesian copyists Agesandros, Athanodoros and Polydoros in the first century. to. c. and so loved by Pliny, who made it an accurate ekphrasis. The group represents, with all the strength and vigor of the Hellenistic baroque, a famous anecdote of Homer’s Iliad: Laocoon, Trojan priest of the god Apollo, was the only one to oppose the notorious entrance of the infamous Trojan horse into the city. For this Athena and Poseidon punished him together with his children, sending him two terrible sea snakes.

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