Bust Of Laoccoon In Plaster Circa 19th Century

Magnificent plaster edition of the bust on pedestal of the Laoccoon. Italian work from the end of the 19th century made for the Grand Tour Very good general condition Measurements height 0.45cms width 0.35 cms depth 0.17 cms History of the Laocoon group This statue is exhibited in the Vatican Museums. This group of white marble, 1m base and 2m high, in a single block, was discovered in 1506 in Rome on the Esquiline hill in Nero's Domus Aurea. The work was immediately identified as the one that Pliny the Elder spoke of with admiration in his "Natural History" and which was in the palace of the Emperor Titus. In mythology, the Trojans wanted to bring the horse into the city of Troy, but the priest Laocoon opposed it, even throwing a javelin against its side, and warned them against the gifts of the Greeks. But while Laocoon was performing a sacrifice, two monstrous serpents, sent by Poseidon, god of the sea and enemy of the Trojans, emerged from the waves and suffocated him and his two sons in their coils. It is this pathetic moment that the sculptors were able to express with these bodies with tense muscles and desperate faces in the suffering of this death.