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The Laocoön
Laocoön was a priest of Apollo. He, along with his two sons, was killed by serpents for attempting to convince his fellow Trojans not to bring the Greeks' fateful wooden horse into their city walls. The tragic episode in the Trojan Wars was famously recounted in Virgil's Aeneid, written in the first century BC, and the marble group now in the Vatican is the only surviving ancient statue of the subject. Working in Rome, the engraver Marco Dente (1493 – 1527) made
two prints of the Laocoön, one based on the recently discovered statue, the other derived from an illustration in a late antique manuscript of the Aeneid. Both versions circulated widely, were endlessly copied, and contributed to making the Laocoön one of the most influential images in European art. As with all images shared with the world, responses ranged from reverent imitations to parodies. |