Laocoon group

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Laocoon group in the Vatican Museum
The Laocoon group as it had been added before the arm was found
detail
detail

The Laocoon group in the Vatican Museums is the most significant representation of the agony of Laocoons and his sons in the visual arts. The work was already particularly praised by Pliny the Elder and, after its rediscovery in 1506, gained great importance in the European intellectual world. The 1.84 meter high marble sculpture is dated to the second half of the 1st century BC. Or the beginning of the 1st century AD and assigned to the sculptors Hagesandros , Polydoros and Athanadoros from Rhodes .

story

The marble sculpture from Roman times was found on January 14, 1506 by Felice de Fredis in his vineyards near the ruins of the Golden House of Nero on the Esquiline in Rome. For the people of the Renaissance , who had just begun to be enthusiastic about antiquity, the find was sensational. The architect Giuliano da Sangallo and the sculptor and painter Michelangelo Buonarroti were sent to de Fredis on behalf of Pope Julius II . With the words: "This is the Laocoon that Pliny mentions", Sangallo is said to have confirmed the authenticity of the find. In March of 1506 the Laocoon group was handed over to Pope Julius II, who took it over into his personal possessions. The finder was awarded the customs revenue from the Porta San Giovanni in Rome, a further reward of 1500 ducats under the next Pope Leo X and a final resting place in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitol . Since then, the group has been in the Vatican Museums in Rome , with a brief interruption between 1798 and 1815, when they found themselves in Paris as spoils of war after the Treaty of Tolentino was signed.

In 1905, the right arm of the Laocoon was found by Ludwig Pollak , an archaeologist and art dealer, and the arm, which had previously been extended as a stretched arm, was replaced by the original, angled at the elbow, in 1960. Additions to the sons (the son's right arm on his right and the son's right hand on his left) were also removed.

In 2016, Susanne Muth and Luca Giuliani proposed a new interpretation of the sculpture: The cramped right arm of the Laocoon speaks for a strong pulling effect upwards. Therefore - unlike in the reconstruction of the Renaissance - the head and not the tail end of the second snake should be located there. Laocoon should therefore be understood less as a hero, but rather as a victim of the snake as an overpowering force of nature.

The Laocoon group achieved an extraordinary influence on the visual arts and art theory - among other things, they inspired the poet Lessing in 1766 to write his treatise Laocoon or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry , in which he worked out the differences between visual art and literature. Even Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Goethe dealt in own work determinedly with the Laocoon group. The rediscovery of the Laocoon group caused a sensation in the Renaissance .

"Laocoon was the artists in ancient Rome ebendas what he is us: the Polyclitus rule; a perfect rule of art ... The general excellent mark of the Greek masterpieces is finally a noble simplicity and a quiet greatness, both in position and expression. Just as the depth of the sea remains calm at all times, no matter how raging the surface, the expression in the figures of the Greeks shows a great and sedate soul for all passions. This soul is portrayed in the face of Laocoon, and not in the face alone, with the most violent suffering. The pain, which is found in all the muscles and tendons of the body and which you almost feel alone, without looking at the face and other parts, in the painfully drawn-in abdomen, this pain, I say, is still not expressed by anyone Anger in the face and in the whole position. He does not raise a terrible shout like Virgil sings about his Laocoon. The opening of the mouth does not permit it; it is rather a fearful and anxious sigh, as Sadolet describes it. The pain of the body and the greatness of the soul are distributed through the whole structure of the figure with equal strength and, as it were, balanced. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like Sophocles Philoctetes: his misery goes to the soul, but we wish to be able to endure the misery like this great man. "

- Johann Joachim Winckelmann

"I therefore dare to repeat again: that the group of the Laocoon, along with all other recognized merits, is at the same time a model of symmetry and diversity, of calm and movement, of opposites and gradations, which together are partly sensual and partly spiritual, to arouse a pleasant sensation in the high pathos of the imagination and to soften the storm of suffering and passion through grace and beauty. "

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Adaptations

The rediscovery of the Laocoon group had a profound impact on Renaissance art in Italy . These influences made themselves felt up to the baroque . Artists like Michelangelo were deeply impressed by the size and aesthetics of Hellenism , particularly in terms of the anatomy and general representation of the male protagonists. This influence of the group and also of the Belvedere's torso on the artist can be most vividly demonstrated in Michelangelo's sculptures such as the Dying Slave or the Bound Slave, which were created for the Julius tomb of Julius II . The Sistine Chapel can also be brought into connection with the physical structure of the Laocoon group in the representation of the body on the ceiling .

Caricature of the Laocoon group with monkeys as protagonists

A specific work that was designed after the Laocoon group is the monkey caricature, a woodcut , probably based on a design by Titian and engraved by Niccoló Boldrini . The illustration shows three monkeys arranged in the same way as the Laocoon group, set in front of a rural scene. The background is very similar to an engraving attributed to Domenico Campagnola , so the caricature can be dated to around 1520–1560, although it has no dating or signature. In addition, another work by the engraver Niccoló Boldrinis gives us information about the collaboration with Titian, the work Venus and Amor bears the signatures of the artist and the wood cutter of the Cinquecento as well as the year 1566. It is located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art .

The caricature was initially held as a satire on a copy of the Laocoon group by Baccio Bandinelli , who worked in Florence , whose copies of the group were often viewed as clumsy and clumsy. Horst W. Janson puts forward another theory ; he relates the caricature to the dispute between the scholars Andreas Vesalius and Galenus , in which Vesalius accuses his predecessor of having only acquired his anatomical knowledge by autopsy of monkeys. A final answer to the question of what the monkey caricature refers to cannot be given according to the current state of research.

literature

  • Georg Daltrop : The Laocoon group in the Vatican. A chapter from the history of the Roman museum and the exploration of antiquity. 2nd edition, Universitätsverlag Konstanz, Konstanz 1986, ISBN 3-87940-207-8 .
  • Christoph Schmälzle (Ed.): Marble in motion. Views of the Laocoon Group. Stroemfeld, Frankfurt am Main [u. a.] 2006, ISBN 3-87877-796-5 .
  • Chrystina Häuber: Il luogo del ritrovamento del gruppo del Laocoonte e la domus Titi imperatoris (Plin. Nat. Hist. 36,37-38). In: Francesco Buranelli, Paolo Liverani, Arnold Nesselrath (eds.): Laocoonte. All origini dei Musei Vaticani, quinto centenario dei Musei Vaticani 1506–2006. L'Erma di Bretschneider, Roma 2006, ISBN 88-8265-409-5 , pp. 41-47, 201-217 (bibliography).
  • Andreas Kilb : The unbearable lightness of horror. Laocoon was not a hero: an exhibition in Berlin proposes a new interpretation of the famous group of statues. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Features, 23 November 2016, p. 11.
  • Bernard Andreae : Entangled in a single snake knot. Susanne Muth and Luca Giuliani take the Laocoon group apart and get tangled up in the sources. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Humanities, August 9, 2017, p. N 3.
  • Christoph Schmälzle: What the eye discovers. Luca Giuliani is lenient: when Winkelmann wrote his classic description of the Laocoon, he had not yet seen the work. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Humanities, August 9, 2017, p. N 3.
  • Christoph Schmälzle: Laocoon in the early modern period. 2 vol., Stroemfeld, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-86600-254-8 .

Web links

Commons : Laocoon Group  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 36,37; see Bernard Andreae : Pliny and the Laocoon. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1987 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Christian Kunze: On the dating of the Laocoon and the Skylla group from Sperlonga. In: Yearbook of the German Archaeological Institute. Volume 111, 1996, pp. 139–223, here: p. 223: “it should […] be original creations […] and not copies based on older models” ( Google Books ).
  3. ↑ This can already be seen in the poem by Jacopo Sadoleto , De Laocoontis statua (1506) (Ed. And introduced by Gregor Maurach (Fontes, 5), 2008, online ).
  4. ↑ Mette Moltesen: Ludwig Pollak, Roman memoirs: artists, art lovers and scholars 1893-1943, ed Margarete Markel Guldan.. Rome, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1994. ISBN 88-706286-3-9 . 236 pp., 44 col. and b. & w. illus. L.000 . Book reviews. In: Journal of the History of Collections . Volume 8, Issue 2, January 1, 1996, ISSN  0954-6650 , p. 221–222 , doi : 10.1093 / jhc / 8.2.221 (English).
  5. ↑ Digital reconstruction at faz.net, accessed on November 23, 2016.
  6. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of November 23, 2016, p. 11.
  7. ^ Johann Joachim Winckelmann: Thoughts on the imitation of Greek works in painting and sculpture. In: Winckelmann's works in one volume. Berlin and Weimar 1969, pp. 1–38 ( online at zeno.org , accessed on January 20, 2011).
  8. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: About Laocoon. In: Berlin edition. Art theoretical writings and translations [Vol. 17–22]. Volume 19, Berlin 1960, p. 129 ff. ( Online at zeno.org).