[Laocoon; Laocoön]
Marble sculptural group that represents an episode recounted in Virgil’s Aeneid (II.199–231), in which a sea monster attacks the Trojan priest Laokoon and his two young sons in front of the walls of Troy. The date and provenance of the work (Rome, Vatican, Cortile Belvedere; h. 2.42 m) is disputed. . . . They regard it as a work of the 1st century AD in the stylistic tradition of the sculptures of Hellenistic Pergamon . . . For centuries the Laokoon enjoyed enormous fame, equal to that of the Apollo Belvedere (Rome, Vatican, Mus. Pio-Clementino).
Luca Leoncini