Currently not on view

Laocoon,
17th century

Italian

y1968-119

The ancient marble sculpture of the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons strangled by snakes (2.42 meters high) was excavated in Rome in 1506. Pope Julius II acquired and exhibited it in the Belvedere courtyard of the Vatican Palace, where it still stands today. One of the very few documented ancient sculptures, it was praised by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History and said to be by three sculptors from the island of Rhodes. Arguably the most celebrated and influential ancient work from its discovery through the later eighteenth century, the Laocoön was copied countless times in drawings, paintings, full-scale casts in plaster or bronze, and small-scale reductions like this.

Information

Title

Laocoon

Dates

17th century

Medium

Terracotta

Dimensions

h. 82 cm (32 5/16 in.) (maximum) plinth: 52 x 24.5 cm (20 1/2 x 9 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Museum purchase, gift of Elias Wolf, Class of 1920, and Mrs. Wolf

Object Number

y1968-119

Culture

Italian

Type

sculpture

Materials

terracotta

Subject

men, suffering, Greek mythology, Roman mythology, snakes, nudes, figures (representations)

Ludwig Pollak, Rome. (Adolph Loewi, Los Angeles); purchase by Princeton University Art Museum.

John Rupert Martin, "Two terra-cotta replicas of the Laocoon Group", <em>Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University</em> 27, no. 2 (1968): p. 68-71., p. 68-71 (illus.)

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Italian, Laocoon, 17th century. Terracotta; 82 cm (maximum), 52 x 24.5 cm (plinth). Museum purchase, gift of Elias Wolf, Class of 1920, and Mrs. Wolf (y1968-119)

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Laocoon,
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Laocoon, 17th century

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Provenance

Bibliographic Entries

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