Large Bust Of Laocoon, Plaster Cast Based On The Ancient Original, Early 20th Century, H 72 Cm

Cast based on the interpretive copy of the Head of Laocoön from the Vatican Belvedere collections, reminiscent of the art of Giuliano Finelli (1601–1657), a collaborator of Bernini, and housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Dimensions: H 72 x W 50 x D 30 cm

This group of statues was discovered in 1506 in Rome, on the Esquiline Hill, and was immediately identified as the Laocoön described by Pliny as a masterpiece by the Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydorus. During the Trojan War, Laocoon, a Trojan priest of the god Apollo, had opposed the entry of the wooden horse into the city walls. Athena and Poseidon, who favored the Greeks, sent two monstrous serpents across the sea, which coiled around Laocoon and his two sons.
A sculpture of this significance could not escape the attention of Julius II (1503–1513), who purchased it without delay to place it in the Court of Statues and make it the ideological centerpiece of his decorative program. The chronology of this marble masterpiece is hotly debated, and critics currently lean toward a date around 40–30 B.C.