This seminar explores theory in  three areas representative of the three departments
     in the graduate group: texts, material things in context, and images.  Each will be
     studied in four week units.

     Participants will each lead two discussions on assigned readings, with no more than
     one in the student's field of study.  Three papers exploring ideas or readings will be
     required, two of which must be outside the student's discipline.  These should be
     short, between 5 and 7 pages normal typescript.

IMAGES

Week 10: Formal Analysis

LAOCOON

                      Hagesandros, Athenodoros and Polydoros of Rhodes
                      Laocoon and his sons
                          ca. 175-150 BCE or 1st century CE?
                          Marble, height 242 cm (95 1/2 in)
                          Museo Pio Clementino, Vatican

       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. Its identification with the
       Laokoon by the Rhodian sculptors HAGESANDROS, POLYDOROS AND ATHENODOROS, said
       by Pliny (Natural History XXXVI.iv.37) to have adorned the Palace of Titus at Rome, has been questioned
       because Pliny claimed that the latter was made from a single block of marble, while the extant group is made
       from several. However, stylistic resemblances between the surviving group and the sculptures in the grotto at
       Sperlonga actually signed by Hagesandros, Polydoros and Athenodoros have caused many scholars to accept it
       as the Laokoon mentioned by Pliny. They regard it as a work of the 1st century AD in the stylistic tradition of
       the sculptures of Hellenistic Pergamon, but perhaps also inspired by statues on Rhodes. The sculpture was
       discovered on 14 January 1506 in a vineyard not far from the basilica of S Maria Maggiore in Rome, and was
       placed in a niche in the Cortile del Belvedere in the Vatican. In 1797 it was moved to Paris, and later put on
       display in the Musée Central des Arts until 1815; the following year it was returned to its original setting in the
       Vatican. When the group was found it lacked the right arm of Laokoon and the right hands of his sons, but
       during the 1530s Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli replaced the arm in terracotta, although its position is not certain.
       In a copy of the group by the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli (c. 1520--22; Florence, Uffizi) the arm is bent, as it
       probably was in antiquity. A terracotta arm extending upwards, perhaps not the one by Montorsoli, remained on
       the sculpture from the second half of the 16th century until it was moved to Paris. For centuries the Laokoon
       enjoyed enormous fame, equal to that of the Apollo Belvedere (Rome, Vatican, Mus. Pio-Clementino). It was not
       only copied by artists from the earliest days of its discovery, but also profoundly influenced the anatomy, poses
       and mood of their work.

       BIBLIOGRAPHY

       U. Aldrovandi: 'Delle statue antiche, che per tutta Roma in diversi luoghi & case si veggono',
           Le antichita della citta di Roma, ed. L. Mauro (Venice, 1556), pp. 115--316 (119--20)
       G. E. Lessing: Laokoon: Oder uber die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (Berlin, 1766); Eng trans. by R.
            Phillimore (London, 1874)
       H. H. Brummer: The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere (Stockholm, 1970), pp. 73--119
       M. Robertson: A History of Greek Art, i (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 541--3
       F. Haskell and N. Penny: Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500--1900 (New Haven and
            London, 1981), pp. 243--7
       B. Andreae: Laokoon und die Grundung Roms (Frankfurt am Main, 1988)

                                                                                   LUCA LEONCINI
http://www.groveart.com

The seer Laocoon, like Cassandra, warned the Trojans against the wooden horse, telling them not bring that
piece of art into the city. And because he threw his spear against it, a deity sent from neighbouring islands,
snakes to kill his sons; and while trying to help them he was blinded or even killed.

                        Troy was taken in the tenth year of the war, not mainly by force but through the stratagem
                        of the wooden horse, conceived by Odysseus:

                        The Achaeans let the architect Epeius fall timber on Mount Ida and construct a
                        wooden horse with a hollow interior and an opening in the side. Then, following
                        Odysseus' advice, they introduced the best warriors into that dangerous device and, after
                        appointing Odysseus their leader, they engraved on the horse a treacherous inscription:

                             "For their return home, the Achaeans dedicate this thank-offering to Athena."
                             [Apollodorus, Epitome 5.15]

                        This is how the Achaeans feigned retreat; and the next day the Trojans, finding the enemy
                        camp deserted and believing that the Achaeans had fled, dragged the horse to the citadel.

                        Having stationed it beside the king's palace they deliberated what they should do, whether
                        to hurl it down from the rocks, to burn it, or to let it stand as a great offering to the gods. It
                        was then that the god-maddened seeress Cassandra declared, with her frenzied voice, that
                        there was an armed force hidden inside the wooden horse, warning the others thus:

                             "O wretched men! why rage you possessed, dragging this unfriendly horse,
                             hasting to your last night and the end of the war and the sleep that knows no
                             waking?" [Cassandra to the Trojans. Tryphiodorus, The taking of Ilios 375]

                        Yet no one was to believe Cassandra; for she had been cursed by the same god who gave
                        her the gift of prophecy in exchange for a promise she never fulfilled. So Apollo (for this
                        was the god), avenging the broken promise, caused her prophecies not to be believed.

                        It is now that the seer Laocoon, priest of Apollo, comes into the story for the first time
                        (for nothing is told about his childhood or youth), confirming Cassandra and exhorting the
                        Trojans to burn the wooden horse:

                             "Is it thus you know Odysseus? Trojans, trust not the horse. Whatever it be, I
                             fear the Greeks, even when bringing gifts." [Laocoon to the Trojans. Virgil,
                             Aeneid 2.48]

                        Some say that Laocoon even threw his spear against the horse.

                        But others say that the Trojans were about to obey him when Athena shook the foundations
                        of the earth at his feet as a warning; and since he did not cease to exhort the Trojans, the
                        goddess, stabbing his eyeballs with anguish, robbed him of his sight. And when he
                        nevertheless persisted, she sent two serpents or dragons from Calydna against the sons of
                        the seer, chaining their feet as all others, except their father, escaped.

                        This is how, some say, Laocoon's sons died and their father was blinded. The name of
                        Laocoon's wife is unknown, but her presence has been reported when her children died
                        and her husband was blinded [Quintus Smyrnaeus].

                                 Some have said that these brothers were killed by the serpents; others say that
                                 the serpents killed only one. Thymbraeus might have died in battle slain by
                                 Diomedes before the fall of Troy.

                        Yet others affirm that it was Apollo who sent the two serpents swimming through the sea
                        from the neighbouring islands to devour the sons of Laocoon, and that as he hurried,
                        weapon in hand, to help his sons, he was killed by the monsters which, gliding away,
                        disappeared into a shrine.

                        Now, if the snakes had not come, or if Laocoon had succeeded in defeating them, he had
                        been deemed to be a very wise man, who knew the secret of the wooden horse
                        without opening it. But since adverse circumstances overwhelmed him, many argued that
                        the man had got what he deserved, and that the horse should be brought to the shrine of
                        Athena (the same goddess who was misleading them), which they did, thus laying open the
                        heart of the city. For the majority among the Trojans, being no different from any other
                        majority of men, preferred success before good sense, and seeing how Laocoon had been
                        destroyed, they refused to imagine that a man, though defeated, could still be in possession
                        of the truth.

                        But the majority must prevail, sometimes against all sense; and so, since most Trojans were
                        in favour of sparing the wonderful horse, they all ended, as a result, sleeping with the enemy
                        within the walls. The majority never woke up, being slain in their beds.

                        Now, why would Apollo have sent the monsters to destroy his priest? According to Frazer,
                        Servius (himself based on Euphorion) says that Laocoon had incurred the wrath of the
                        god by sleeping with his wife in the presence of the deity's image; and Frazer adds that
                        Tzetzes affirms that Laocoon's son died in the temple of the Thymbraean Apollo, the
                        scene of the sacrilege thus becoming the scene of the punishment.

                        Concerning the famous statue:

                             "That group, the work of three Rhodian sculptors, graced the palace of the
                             emperor Titus in the time of Pliny, who declared that it was to be preferred to
                             any other work either of sculpture or painting (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi.37).

       Sources
       Apd.Ep.5.17; DH.1.48.2; Hom.Od.8.505ff.; Hyg.Fab.135; QS.12.391ff.; SI.1; Try.250ff.; Vir.Aen.2.214ff.

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Laocoon2.html

Laocoon was a Trojan, said by some to be the brother of Anchises, and a priest of the sea god Poseidon.
Both the Greeks and the Romans remembered him as the man who warned the Trojans not to accept the
so-called Greek gift of the Wooden Horse. He even drove a spear into its side to show his fellow countrymen
that inside the hollow belly could lurk a terrible danger to Troy. However, like the prophetess Cassandra, Laocoon was ignored. Worse than the fate of Cassandra was that of Laocoon and his two sons, for no Trojan lifted a hand to help when two great sea-serpents suddenly arrived and crushed them to death.

There was no agreement, however, among the Greeks or the Romans about why Laocoon and his sons were killed by the sea-serpents. One opinion was that Laocoon's punishment was not connected with the Trojan War at all. The god of prophecy, Apollo, was simply punishing the priest for disobeying a divine command. An alternative view was that the death of Laocoon and his sons was the work of Athena of Poseidon for causing damage to the dedicatory horse. A Greek named Sinon had informed the Trojans that it was an offering to the goddess Athena; if they destroyed it, then Troy would fall, but if they dragged it inside the city walls, then the Wooden Horse was a guarantee of Troy's safety. In any event the cunning plot worked for the benefit of the Greeks, as those warriors hidden within the horse began a slaughter that led to the eventual overthrow and destruction of the besieged city.

http://www.swishweb.com/Religion_and_Mythology/Greek_and_Roman_Myth/L/relmyth02grml.htm

École Normale Supérieure

Colloque de l'UMR 8547 du CNRS "Pays germaniques: histoire, culture, philosophie"

            LE LAOCOON, HISTOIRE ET RÉCEPTION

    Organisé par Élisabeth DÉCULTOT, Chargée de recherche au CNRS et chargée de
  conférences à l'EPHE, Jacques Le RIDER et François QUEYREL, Directeurs d'études à l'EPHE.

  En coopération avec l'Institut Historique Allemand de Paris et l'École pratique des Hautes
               Études, Section des Sciences historiques et philologiques

 Le lundi 29 avril 2002, à l'Institut Historique Allemand de Paris. Hôtel Duret de Chevry, 8,
                         rue du Parc Royal, 75003 Paris

    et le mardi 30 avril 2002, à l'École Normale Supérieure, 45, rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris,

  et à l'École pratique des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences historiques et philologiques,
            Sorbonne (escalier E, 1er étage), 45, rue des Écoles, 75005 Paris

                        PROGRAMME PROVISOIRE

Lundi 29 avril 2002

9 h.30-12 h.30 & 14 h.30-18 h., à l'Institut Historique Allemand de Paris

     9h.30: Ouverture du colloque par Werner PARAVICINI, Directeur de l'Institut Historique
     Allemand de Paris, et Jean BAUBÉROT, Président de l'École pratique des Hautes Études

     10h.: Brunilde Sismondo RIDGWAY (professeur à Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvanie):
     Le Laocoon dans la sculpture hellénistique

     11h.: Bernard ANDREAE (Directeur honoraire de l'Institut Allemand d'Archéologie de Rome):
     Laocoon et l'art de Pergame

     11h.45: Richard BRILLIANT (professeur à l'Université Columbia de New York):
     Le Laocoon aujourd'hui

     14 h.30: Alain PASQUIER (Inspecteur général des Musées de France, Conservateur en chef
     du Département des Antiquités grecques et romaines du Musée du Louvre):
     Terres cuites représentant Laocoon à l'époque hellénistique

     14h.50: Henri LAVAGNE (Correspondant de l'Institut, Directeur d'études à l'EPHE):
     Adaptations du Laocoon dans l'art gallo-romain: un document oublié

     15h.15: François QUEYREL (Directeur d'études à l'EPHE):
     La polychromie du Laocoon

     16h.15: Salvatore SETTIS (Directeur de l'École Normale Supérieure de Pise):
     La fortune du Laocoon

     17h.: Discussion présidée par Jean MARCADÉ (Membre de l'Institut)

Mardi 30 avril 2002

9 h.30-12 h.45 & 14 h.30-17 h., à l'École Normale Supérieure, Ulm

     9 h.30: Wilfried BARNER (Professeur à l'Université de Göttingen):
     Lessings Laokoon. Deduktion und Induktion

     10 h.15: Élisabeth DÉCULTOT (Chargée de recherche au CNRS, chargée de conférences à l'EPHE):
     Winckelmann et le Laocoon

     11 h.15: Christian MICHEL (Professeur à l'Université de Paris X-Nanterre):
     Les discours français sur le Laocoon au XVIIIe siècle

     12 h.: Gunter GEBAUER (Professeur à la Freie Universität de Berlin):
     Der Körper des Laokoon

    14 h.30: Ségolène Le MEN (Professeur à l'Université de Paris X-Nanterre):
    Regards sur le Laocoon au XIXe siècle: la caricature selon Daumier, la photographie selon Braun

     15 h.15: Michel ESPAGNE (Directeur de recherche au CNRS):
     Le Laocoon entre Karl Justi et Aby Warburg

     16 h.15: Jacques Le RIDER (Directeur d'études à l'EPHE):
     Ruptures de tradition dans la réception du Laocoon, d'El Greco à Lessing et William Blake

     17 h.: Ernst OSTERKAMP (Professeur l'Université Humboldt de Berlin):
     Laokoon in den präromantischen Strömungen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Heinse, Moritz)

          17 h.45-18 h.15: Transfert du colloque de l'École Normale Supérieure à la
          Section des Sciences historiques et philologiques de l'École pratique des
          Hautes Études

18 h.15-20 h., à l'École pratique des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences historiques et
philologiques

     Séance présidée par Laurent DUBOIS, Directeur d'études, Président de la Section des
     Sciences historiques et philologiques

     Wilhelm VOSSKAMP (Professeur à l'Université de Cologne):
     Goethe et le Laocoon

          Réception offerte par la Section des Sciences historiques et philologiques
          de l'École pratique des Hautes Études

Contact: elisabeth.decultot@ens.fr

P. Vergili Maronis, Aeneidos, Lib. II

The Trojan general Aeneas, now safely in Carthage, North Africa, tells his hostess Queen Dido of the last days of Troy. In his story, the Trojans have just discovered the wooden horse - built so large by the Greeks that the Trojans had to remove some of their walls to get it into the city.

                 Primus ibi ante omnis, magna comitante caterua,
                    Laocoon ardens summa decurrit ab arce,
                  et procul : 'o miseri, quae tanta insania, ciues?
                     Creditis auectos hostis? aut ulla putatis
                  dona carere dolis Danaum? sic notus Vlixes?
                    Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achiui,
                 aut haec in nostros fabricata est machina muros,
                   inspectura domos uenturaque desuper urbi,
                 aut aliquis latet error : equo ne credite, Teucri.
                 Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.'
                    Sic fatus ualidis ingentem uiribus hastam
                  in latus inque feri curuam compagibus aluum
                  cortorsit. Stetit illa tremens, uteroque recusso
                 insonuere cauae gemitumque dedere cauernae.
                    Et, si fata deum, si mens non laeua fuisset,
                   impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras,
                Troiaque nunc staret, Priamque arx alta, maneres.

Rough Translation:

Then in the distance, there came a large crowd running down from the citadel, led by Laocoon
who called with burning passion: 'Are you completely mad, you miserable people? Do you
honestly trust your enemy? You really think the Greeks will give us gifts free of deceipt? Isn't
this what Ulysses is famous for? There might be hidden Greeks locked up inside this wooden
thing, or it might be an engine to attack our walls - maybe to spy on our homes or to come down
on the city from above, or make some other form of attack. Trojans beware: don't trust this
horse, because whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even if they are bearing gifts.'

So saying, with all his strength he hurled a large spear at the side of beast, into a joint in its
curved belly. It stood there quivering, the womb having recoiled and the hollowed caverns
echoing a groan.

If it had not been for the will of the Gods who had corrupted our minds, this would have
persuaded us to take out that Greek hiding-place with our swords - and Troy would still be
standing now, and the great citadel of Priam would remain.

                                                   Aeneid 2, tr. A.R.B.

 Laocoon was an intriguing character in Greek mythology. He played a small but
 significant role in the notorious Trojan war, and his memorable contributions to
 myth were celebrated in a famous Hellenistic statue. Read on to learn more about
 this legendary figure.

 According to ancient authors, Laocoon was a Trojan priest of Poseidon (note,
 however, that some sources claim that he was instead one of Apollo's priests). In
 mythology, Laocoon was the brother of the hero Anchises and son of Capys. One
 of our best sources for the story of Laocoon is found in Virgil's Aeneid. In this
 epic tale, the Roman poet Virgil describes the dramatic scene in which the Trojans
 discover an enormous Wooden Horse standing outside the city of Troy. The
 prescient priest Laocoon warns against bringing the gigantic Horse into Troy in a
 famous speech:

      "'O my poor people,
      Men of Troy, what madness has come over you?
      Can you believe the enemy truly gone?
      A gift from the Danaans, and no ruse?
      Is that Ulysses' way, as you have known him?
      Achaeans must be hiding in this timber,
      Or it was built to butt against our walls,
      Peer over them into our houses, pelt
      The city from the sky. Some crookedness
      Is in this thing. Have no faith in the horse!
      Whatever it is, even when Greeks bring gifts
      I fear them, gifts and all.'"

 Immediately after saying these words, Virgil has Laocoon hurl his spear into the
 flank of the Wooden Horse. However, this gesture was to come back to haunt
 Laocoon. For soon after this incident, while the priest is sacrificing to his god
 Poseidon, a pair of giant sea serpents emerge from the sea and envelope both
 Laocoon and his two sons (this tragic scene is immortalized in the aforementioned
 Hellenistic statue - see the gallery page below for details and an image). The
 Trojans interpret this grotesque punishment as a sign that Laocoon offended the
 gods - either Athena or Poseidon in particular - for attacking the Wooden Horse. In
 the end, the Horse in brought into Troy, which is a fatal mistake and seals the city's
 doom.

Gaius Julius Hyginus: Fabulae

 Laocoon Capyos filius Anchisae frater Apollinis
 sacerdos contra voluntatem Apollinis cum
 uxorem duxisset atque liberos procreasset, sorte
 ductus, ut sacrum faceret Neptuno ad litus.

 Apollo occasione data a Tenedo per fluctus
 maris dracones misit duos qui filios eius
 Antiphantem et Thymbraeum necarent, quibus
 Laocoon cum auxilium ferre vellet, ipsum
 quoque nexum necaverunt.

 Quod Phryges idcirco factum putarunt, quod
 Laocoon hastam in equum Troianum miserit.

                                       Laocoon, son of Capys and brother of
                                       Anchises, had married and raised a family
                                       against the will of Apollo; he was now chosen
                                       by lot to sacrifice to Poseidon on the shore.

                                       Apollo took the opportunity to send two
                                       snakes across the bay from Tenedos, which
                                       killed Laocoon's sons, Antiphas and
                                       Thymbraeus. When Laocoon tried to come to
                                       their aid, the snakes coiled around him and
                                       killed him too.

                                       The Trojans concluded that this took place
                                       because Laocoon had hurled a spear at the
                                       Trojan horse.

  Depuis sa redécouverte il y a bientôt cinq siècles, le groupe en marbre représentant
  Laocoon et ses fils s'affirme comme la sculpture antique la plus renommée.
  Elle fut mise à jour au cours de fouilles le 14 janvier 1506, en présence de
  Michel-Ange et rapidement achetée par le pape Jules II pour être installée dans la
  cour du Belvédère. On établit immédiatement le rapport avec une statue décrite par
  l'historien romain Pline l'Ancien. Celui-ci attribuait l'úuvre à trois sculpteurs
  rhodiens : Hagèsandros, Polydôros et Athanadôros.

  Cette sculpture est particulièrement remarquable car on n'en connaît pas d'autre
  exemplaire dans l'antiquité. Dès lors, sa datation a fait l'objet de controverses. Il
  pourrait s'agir d'une copie réalisée par des sculpteurs rhodiens à partir d'un bronze
  perdu daté vers 140 avant J.-C. Il est également possible que nous soyons en
  présence d'une création originale conçue dans les dernières décennies du Ier siècle
  avant J.-C. par les trois sculpteurs rhodiens établis en Italie.

Cette sculpture illustrant un épisode lié à la chute de Troie, est proche d'une description du poète latin Virgile, dans l'Enéide. Laocoon avait mis en garde ses concitoyens contre le cheval de bois laissé par les Grecs devant les murs de la ville. Mais alors qu'il s'apprêtait à célébrer un sacrifice, il fut étouffé avec ses fils par deux serpents sortis de la mer. Les Troyens effrayés décidèrent alors de faire entrer le cheval dans leur cité, ce qui allait entraîner sa ruine.
 

" Alors un autre spectacle, plus imposant et beaucoup plus terrible, s'offre à
  la vue des malheureux Troyens, et jette dans leurs cúurs un trouble imprévu.
  Laocoon, tiré au sort prêtre de Neptune, immolait un taureau puissant au pied
  des autels solennels.

  Or voilà que deux serpents, venus à travers les flots tranquilles de Ténédos
  (j'en frémis encore d'horreur), allongent sur la mer leurs immenses anneaux et
  s'avancent de front vers le rivage. Leurs poitrines se dressent au milieu des
  vagues, et leurs crêtes sanglantes dominent les ondes ; le reste de leurs corps
  effleure à la surface de la mer, et leurs croupes immenses se replient en spirale.

  On entend clapoter, écumante, l'onde amère. Déjà ils touchaient terre, et,
  leurs yeux ardents, injectés de sang et de feu, léchaient leurs gueules
  sifflantes de leurs langues vibrantes. Nous fuyons à cette vue, glacés d'effroi.
  Eux, d'un élan sûr, vont droit à Laocoon ; et d'abord l'un et l'autre serpent,
  enlaçant les petits corps de ses deux fils, s'enroulent autour de leurs proies et
  déchirent de morsures leurs misérables membres.

  Puis comme Laocoon volait à leur secours, les armes à la main, ils le
  saisissent lui-même et l'étreignent de leurs replis énormes ; deux fois déjà ils
  ont enlacé son corps par le milieu et deux fois, autour de son cou, enroulé
  leur croupe écailleuse, le dépassant de leur tête et de leur haute encolure.
  Lui, s'efforce d'écarter leurs núuds avec ses mains : leur bave et leur noir
  venin souillent ses bandelettes, et en même temps il jette vers les cieux des
  cris épouvantables. Tel mugit un taureau, lorsque, blessé du fer, il s'est enfui
  de l'autel, en secouant à son cou la hache mal assurée.

  Cependant les deux serpents s'enfuient en rampant vers les hauteurs du
  temple [Ö] ".

[ extrait du livre II ]

A partir du XVe siècle s'affirma à Rome, dans les milieux érudits, une prise de conscience de la nécessité de sauvegarder les vestiges antiques. C'est cette idée qui produisit la naissance des collections. En 1471, c'est à l'initiative du pape Sixte IV que furent réunies à l'intérieur ou près du palais des Conservateurs sur le Capitole plusieurs úuvres majeures, dont le Marc Aurèle et le Tireur d'épine. Ces sculptures considérées comme un héritage culturel et politique de la Rome antique avaient été offertes " au peuple romain " par le pape.

Au début du XVIe siècle, son neveu Jules II, celui-là même qui commanda à Michel-Ange le plafond de la chapelle Sixtine, réunit une collection d'antiques extrêmement célèbres dont le Laocoon, l'Apollon du Belvédère, l'Ariane endormie ou le Torse du Belvédère. Ces statues furent présentées au Vatican dans la cour du Belvédère. Par la suite, l'installation d'une statue dans cette cour hissait immédiatement celle-ci au rang d'úuvre de référence pour l'art occidental.

Les grandes familles aristocratiques romaines ne furent pas en reste et alors que l'on multipliait les fouilles, elles réunirent également de prestigieuses collections. Ce type de mécénat contribuait à affirmer leur prestige social en renouant avec l'héritage impérial. Parmi ces collections on peut citer celle des familles Farnèse, Médicis, Ludovisi ou encore Borghèse.

http://www.louvre.fr/archives/antique/laocoon_frameset.html

Marcantonio Raimondi, Laocoon, ca. 1520-25, engraving

Marble copy by Baccio Bandinelli, ca. 1525, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

  Attributed to Francesco Xanto Avelli, Urbino, possibly with assistants;
  lustered in the workshop of Maestro Giorgio Andreoli of Gubbio, or possibly in Urbino
  Shallow bowl on low foot with the death of Laocoön and his two sons, 1539
  tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica), diameter: .270m (10 5/8 in.)

Primaticcio, Laocoon, bronze cast, ca. 1540. H. 1, 91 ; L. 1, 68 ; Pr. 0, 89.
Fontainebleau, musée national du château.

  Cet exemplaire en bronze du Laocoon appartient à la série des copies de sculptures
  antiques fondues à la demande de François Ier pour Fontainebleau.

  Vers 1540, François Ier se prit d'un vif intérêt pour la statuaire antique. Il
  chargea alors l'artiste italien Primatice d'aller en Italie afin de procéder à
  d'éventuels achats. Mais le résultat de cette mission dépassa toutes les
  espérances.

  Primatice eut l'idée de faire réaliser à Rome des moulages en creux des
  úuvres antiques les plus célèbres de la cour du Belvédère. Les différents
  morceaux de ces moulages furent ensuite expédiés en France. Aidé de
  l'architecte Vignole, Primatice mit en place une fonderie à Fontainebleau.
  Les copies en bronze y furent réalisées à partir des moules.

  D'après les comptes des bâtiments, dix statues furent ainsi coulées, dont
  l'Ariane endormie, le Laocoon, et l'Apollon du Belvédère. Un moulage en
  plâtre du cheval de la statue de Marc Aurèle avait même été réalisé à Rome,
  mais il ne fut jamais coulé en bronze.

  Volontairement ou non, ces répliques n'étaient pas toujours fidèles à leurs
  originaux dans les détails. Les réalisations de Fontainebleau allaient avoir
  une importance capitale dans l'histoire du goût.

  Les valeurs de l'Antiquité allaient pouvoir servir de critères dans le jugement
  esthétique au-delà de l'Italie. Et les statues de Fontainebleau en constitueraient les points de repère canoniques.

  L'intérêt majeur de cet exemplaire est de présenter une image de l'úuvre antique telle
  qu'elle était apparue lors de sa découverte. En effet, les bras droits des trois personnages étaient alors manquants.

Vers 1532, un collaborateur de Michel-Ange restitua donc à la figure principale un bras en terre cuite tendu vers le haut. Le moulage ayant servi pour la réalisation du bronze a été réalisé postérieurement à cette restauration. Il faut donc en déduire que le bras moderne a été alors retiré, avec le souci de prendre en compte uniquement l'úuvre originelle. Cette pratique témoigne du goût pour les formes incomplètes, alors apprécié à Fontainebleau.

Le bras de Laocoon fut retrouvé au XXe siècle chez un tailleur de pierre. On constata alors qu'il était plié vers l'arrière de son visage. Il a depuis été remis en place.

  Après avoir orné les jardins de Fontainebleau, le Laocoon est demeuré aux
  Tuileries pendant le XIXe siècle, avant de retrouver enfin en 1968 le lieu pour
  lequel il avait été créé.

Lucio Massari, Laocoon, drawing, ca. 1600

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) 1541 - 1614
Laocoön, c. 1610/1614
oil on canvas, 1.375 x 1.725 m (54 1/8 x 67 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

                                  Widespread interest in the story of Laocoön, a mythical priest of Troy, developed after an
                                  ancient, monumental sculpture representing him and his two sons was unearthed in 1506
                                  in Rome. Suspecting trickery, Laocoön had warned his countrymen not to accept the
                                  wooden horse left outside Troy by the Greeks and had hurled his spear at it to prove that
                                  it was hollow. Thus the priest incurred the wrath of the gods, for desecrating an object
                                  dedicated to the goddess Athena. El Greco depicted serpents, sent by the angry gods,
                                  engaging Laocoön and one son in a mortal struggle, while a second son lies already dead
                                  at his father's side. The identity of the unfinished figures on the right continues to be
                                  debated; perhaps they represent the gods themselves supervising their vengeance.

                                  Utilizing every available means -- writhing line, lurid color, and illogically conceived space
                                  -- the artist projected an unrelieved sense of doom. The figures seem incorporeal; sinuous
                                  outlines and anti-natural flesh tones contribute to their specterlike appearance. The striking
                                  setting carries this visionary late work of El Greco to an apocalyptic extreme.

                                  Did El Greco intend to relate this mythical theme of conflict and divine retribution to the
                                  Inquisition then raging in Toledo? Whatever the case, the story of Laocoön is the only
                                  classical theme he is known to have painted.

http://www.daringdesigns.com/photo-laoc.htm

Giovanni Paolo Pannini 1691-1765
Gallery of Views of Ancient Rome 1758
Canvas H 2.31; W 3.03 m
Musée du Louvre, Paris

This picture, which has as its pendant a Gallery of Views of Modern Rome, depicts an imaginary
museum made up of vestiges of ancient Rome. Its architectural monuments are conjured up by
means of a gallery of paintings which is, in some way, a repertory of Pannini's tireless studies of
the Roman past. Compelling for its perspectival combinations and its cumulative effect, the
painting is eloquent testimony to the archeological fervour in mid-18th century Europe which
followed upon the discoveries of the buried cities of the Herculaneum and Pompeii.

  Depuis leur redécouverte à la Renaissance, les úuvres antiques n'ont cessé
  d'alimenter les débats esthétiques dans les milieux artistiques. Et parmi les
  sculptures qui ont engendré le plus grand nombre de commentaires et
  d'analyses, se distingue en tout premier lieu le Laocoon. Cette úuvre fit
  ainsi l'objet en 1667 d'une conférence à l'Académie royale de peinture et de
  sculpture. Ce fut l'occasion pour son directeur Le Brun d'exposer quelques-unes de ses théories.

  On insista notamment sur la nécessité de copier les úuvres antiques pour
  assimiler le "grand goût" dont les Anciens étaient les garants. Au siècle
  suivant, Winckelmann dans son Histoire de l'art de l'Antiquité consacra
  plusieurs pages élogieuses à la célèbre statue. Il insistait sur le savant
  équilibre entre l'expression d'émotions intenses et le maintien d'une certaine noblesse.

" Là où est le siège de la plus grande douleur, se trouve aussi la plus sublime beauté ".

  Le Laocoon a également été analysé en référence à la célèbre description de
  Virgile. On notait ainsi le bon goût de la sculpture et la retenue de l'agonie
  des personnages opposés à la violence du poème.

  Cette question de la distinction entre les arts visuels et littéraires fut
  développée dans un essai célèbre par le critique allemand Lessing.
  Cet ouvrage intitulé Laocoon et publié en 1766, est certainement la plus
  fameuse contribution à un débat auquel prirent part de nombreux artistes et écrivains.

  Se fondant sur la célèbre sculpture, Lessing y affirmait, contrairement à l'idée
  qui prévalait depuis la Renaissance, la différence complète entre poésie et peinture.
  Les deux arts ayant des façons totalement opposées de susciter l'émotion chez
  le spectateur ou le lecteur.

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717-1768)

  Cet écrivain et archéologue allemand est considéré comme un des fondateurs
  de l'histoire de l'art moderne.

  Fils d'un cordonnier, précepteur puis bibliothécaire, il publie à Dresde en
  1755 les Réflexions sur l'imitation des úuvres grecques dans la sculpture &
  la peinture, aussitôt traduit en anglais et français.

  Converti au catholicisme, il s'installe à Rome. Là, il devient le
  bibliothécaire d'un des plus grands collectionneurs de l'époque, le cardinal
  Albani, avant d'être nommé surintendant des antiquités de Rome par le pape
  en 1764. Dans le contexte des fouilles archéologiques à Rome ou à
  Herculanum et Pompéi, Winckelmann affirme la prééminence des modèles grecs.

  Sa doctrine s'exprime dans son úuvre maîtresse : l'Histoire de l'art de l'Antiquité (1764).
  Selon lui : " le seul moyen que nous ayons d'être grands,
  voire inimitables si c'est possible, est d'imiter les Anciens [Ö] ". Ses écrits
  sur la sculpture grecque et romaine ont révolutionné les études
  archéologiques en donnant un cadre pour une classification des úuvres
  antiques fondée sur une évolution stylistique. Il prône une connaissance des
  objets et des úuvres antiques liée à l'étude du contexte social, religieux ou
  climatique qui les a vu naître.

  Winckelmann associe ainsi la création de chefs-d'úuvre grecs à l'existence
  d'une liberté politique. Les idées de Winckelmann contribueront à alimenter
  les débats esthétiques autour des úuvres antiques.

  La redécouverte au XIXe siècle des úuvres grecques originales, en Grèce,
  permettra d'affiner et de poursuivre les réflexions de Winckelmann, menées à
  partir de copies romaines.

Anton Raphael Mengs (German, 1728?1779)
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717?1768), shortly after 1755
Oil on canvas; 25 x 19 3/8 in. (63.5 x 49.2 cm)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

                       One of the most influential writers on artóhis "Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Art in
                       Paintings and Sculpture" was published in Dresden in 1755 and his "History of Ancient
                       Art" appeared in 1764óJohann Joachim Winckelmann was also a close friend and admirer
                       of Mengs, the leading exponent of the nascent Neoclassical movement in Rome. In this
                       portrait, painted shortly after Winkelmann settled in Rome in 1755, the great
                       writer/archeologist is shown holding a Greek edition of Homer's Iliad.

From: Johann Joachim Winckelmann , Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (1755)

1. Nature

There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating the ancients. And what we are told of Homer, that whoever understands him well, admires him, we find no less true in matters concerning the ancient, especially the Greek arts. But then we must be as familiar with them as with a friend, to find Laocoon as inimitable as Homer. By such intimacy our judgment will be that of Nicomachus: Take these eyes, replied he to some paltry critic, censuring the Helen of Zeuxis, Take my eyes, and she will appear a goddess.

With such eyes Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Poussin, considered the performances of the ancients. They imbibed taste at its source; and Raphael particularly in its native country. We know, that he sent young artists to Greece, to copy there, for his use, the remains of antiquity.

Laocoon was the standard of the Roman artists, as well as ours; and the rules of Polycletus became the rules of Art.

lt is not only Nature which the votaries of the Greeks find in their works, but still more, something superior to nature; ideal beauties, brainborn images, as Proclus says.

The most beautiful body of ours would perhaps be as much inferior to the most beautiful Greek one, as Iphicles was to his brother Hercules. The forms of the Greeks, prepared to beauty, by the influence of the mildest and purest sky, became perfectly elegant by their early exercises. Take a Spartan youth, sprung from heroes, undistorted by swaddling clothes; whose bed, from his seventh year, was the earth, familiar with wrestling and swimming from his infancy; and compare him with one of our young Sybarites, and then decide which of the two would be deemed worthy, by an artist, to serve for the model of a Theseus, an Achilles, or even a Bacchus. The latter would produce a Theseus fed on roses, the former a Theseus fed on flesh, to borrow the expression of Euphranor.

The grand games were always a very strong incentive for every Greek youth to exercise himself. Whoever aspired to the honours of these was obliged, by the laws, to submit to a trial of ten months at Elis, the general rendezvous; and there the first rewards were commonly won by youths, as Pindar teils us. To be like the God-like Diagoras, was the fondest wish of every youth.

Behold the swift Indian outstripping in pursuit the hart: how briskly his juices circulate! how flexible, how elastic his nerves and muscles! how easy his whole Frame! Thus Homer draws his heroes, and his Achilles he eminently marks for "being swift of foot."

By these exercises the bodies of the Greeks got the great and manly Contour observed in their statues, without any bloated corpulency. The young Spartans were bound to appear every tenth day naked before the Ephori, who, when they perceived any inclination to fatness, ordered them a scantier diet; nay, it was one of Pythagoras's precepts, to beware of growing too corpulent; and, perhaps for the same reason, youths aspiring to wrestling-games were, in the remoter ages of Greece, during their trial, confined to a milk diet.

They were particularly cautious in avoiding every deforming custom; and Alcibiades, when a boy, refusing to learn to play on the flute, for fear of its discomposing his features, was followed by all the youth of Athens.

In their dress they were professed followers of nature. No modern stiffening habit, no squeezing stays hindered Nature from forming easy beauty; the fair knew no anxiety about their attire, and from their loose and short habits the Spartan girls got the epithet of Phaenomirides.

Those diseases which are destructive of beauty, were moreover unknown to the Greeks. There is not the least hint of the small-pox, in the writings of their physicians; and Homer, whose portraits are always so truly drawn, mentions not one pitted face. Venereal plagues, and their daughter the English malady, had not yet names.

And must we not then, considering every advantage which nature bestows, or art teaches, for forming, preserving, and improving beauty, enjoyed and applied by the Grecians; must we not then confess, there is the strongest probability that the beauty of their persons excelled all we can have an idea of?

Art claims liberty: in vain would nature produce her noblest offsprings, in a country where rigid laws would choke her progressive growth, as in Egypt, that pretended parent of sciences and arts: but in Greece, where, from their earliest youth, the happy inhabitants were devoted to mirth and pleasure, where narrow-spirited formality never restrained the liberty of manners, the artist enjoyed nature without a veil.

The Gymnasia, where, sheltered by public modesty, the youths exercised themselves naked, were the schools of art. These the philosopher frequented, as well as the artist. Socrates for the instruction of a Charmides, Autolycus, Lysis; Phidias for the improvement of his art by their beauty. Here he studied the elasticity of the muscles, the ever varying motions of the frame, the outlines of fair forms, or the Contour left by the young wrestler on the sand. Here beautiful nakedness appeared with such a liveliness of expression, such truth and variety of situations, such a noble air of the body, as it would be ridiculous to look for in any hired model of our academies.

Truth springs from the feelings of the heart. What shadow of it therefore can the modern artist hope for, by relying upon a live model, whose soul is either too base to feel, or too stupid to express the passions, the sentiment his object claims? unhappy he! if experience and fancy fail him.

The beginning of many of Plato's dialogues, supposed to have been held in the Gymnasia, cannot raise our admiration of the generous souls of the Athenian youth, without giving us, at the same time, a strong presumption of a suitable nobleness in their outward carriage and bodily exercises.

The fairest youths danced undressed on the theatre; and Sophocles, the great Sophocles, when young, was the first who dared to entertain his fellow-citizens in this manner. Phryne went to bathe at the Eleusinian games, exposed to the eyes of all Greece, and rising from the water became the model of Venus Anadyomene. During certain solemnities the young Spartan maidens danced naked before the young men: strange this may seem, but will appear more probable, when we consider that the Christians of the primitive church, both men and women, were dipped together in the same font.

Then every solemnity, every festival, afforded the artist opportunity to familiarize himself with all the beauties of Nature.

These frequent occasions of observing Nature, taught the Greeks to go on still farther. They began to form certain general ideas of beauty, with regard to the proportions of the inferiour parts, as well as of the whole frame: these they raised above the reach of mortality, according to the superiour model of some ideal nature.

Thus Raphael formed his Galatea, as we learn by his letter to Count Baltazar Castiglione, where he says, "Beauty being so seldom found among the fair, I avail myself of a certain ideal image."

According to those ideas, exalted above the pitch of material models, the Greeks formed their gods and heroes: the profile of the brow and nose of gods and goddesses is almost a straight line. The same they gave on their coins to queens, &c. but without indulging their fancy too much. Perhaps this profile was as peculiar to the ancient Greeks, as flat noses and little eyes to the Calmucks and Chinese; a supposition which receives some strength from the large eyes of all the heads on Greek coins and gems.

From the same ideas the Romans formed their Empresses on their coins. Livia and Agrippina have the profile of Artemisia and Cleopatra.

We observe, nevertheless, that the Greek artists in general, submitted to the law prescribed by the Thebans: "To do, under a penalty, their best in imitating Nature." For, where they could not possibly apply their easy profile, without endangering the resemblance, they followed Nature, as we see instanced in the beauteous head of Julia, the daughter of Titus, done by Euodus.

But to form a "just resemblance, and, at the same time, a handsomer one," being always the chief rule they observed, and which Polygnotus constantly went by; they must, of necessity, be supposed to have had in view a more beauteous and more perfect Nature. And when we are told, that some artists imitated Praxiteles, who took his concubine Gratina for the model of his Cnidian Venus; or that others formed the graces from Lais; it is to be understood that they did so, without neglecting these great laws of the art. Sensual beauty furnished the painter with all that nature could give; ideal beauty with the awful and sublime; from that he took the Humane, from this the Divine.

Let any one, sagacious enough to pierce into the depths of art, compare the whole system of the Greek figures with that of the moderns, by which, as they say, nature alone is imitated; good heaven! what a number of neglected beauties will he not discover!

For instance, in most of the modern figures, if the skin happens to be any where pressed, you see there several little smart wrinkles: when, on the contrary, the same parts, pressed in the same manner on Greek statues, by their soft undulations, form at last but one noble pressure. These masterpieces never show us the skin forcibly stretched, but softly embracing the firm flesh, which fills it up without any tumid expansion, and harmoniously follows its direction. There the skin never, as on modern bodies, appears in plaits distinct from the flesh.

Modern works are likewise distinguished from the ancient by parts; a crowd of small touches and dimples too sensibly drawn. In ancient works you find these distributed with sparing sagacity, and, as relative to a completer and more perfect Nature, offered but as hints, nay, often perceived only by the learned.

The probability still increases, that the bodies of the Greeks, as well as the works of their artists, were framed with more unity of system, a nobler harmony of parts, and a completeness of the whole, above our lean tensions and hollow wrinkles.

Such as would fain deny to the Greeks the advantages both of a more perfect Nature and of ideal Beauties, boast of the famous Bernini, as their great champion. He was of opinion, besides, that Nature was possessed of every requisite beauty: the only skill being to discover that. He boasted of having got rid of a prejudice concerning the Medicean Venus, whose charms he at first thought peculiar ones; but, after many careful researches, discovered them now and then in Nature.

He was taught then, by the Venus, to discover beauties in common Nature, which he had formerly thought peculiar to that statue, and but for it, never would have searched for them. Follows it not from thence, that the beauties of the Greek statues being discovered with less difficulty than those of Nature, are of course more affecting; not so diffused, but more harmoniously united? and if this be true, the pointing out of Nature as chiefly imitable, is leading us into a more tedious and bewildered road to the knowledge of perfect beauty, than setting up the ancients for that purpose: consequently Bernini, by adhering too strictly to Nature, acted against his own principles, as well as obstructed the progress of his disciples.

The imitation of beauty is either reduced to a single object, and is individual, or, gathering observations from single ones, composes of these one whole. The former we call copying, drawing a portrait; 'tis the straight way to Dutch forms and figures; whereas the other leads to general beauty, and its ideal images, and is the way the Greeks took.

Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through Nature, showing in the other the pitch to which the most perfect Nature can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses, will quicken the genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and divine beauty.

Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the Greek rule of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to the imitation of Nature. The ideas of unity and perfection, which he acquired in meditating on antiquity, will help him to combine, and to ennoble the more scattered and weaker beauties of our Nature. Thus he will improve every beauty he discovers in it, and by comparing the beauties of nature with the ideal, form rules for himself.

Nothing would more decisively prove the advantages to be got by imitating the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an essay made with two youths of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity, the other to Nature: this would draw Nature as he finds her; if Italian, perhaps he might paint like Caravaggio; if Flemish, and lucky, like Jordaens; if French, like Stella: the other would draw her as she directs, and paint like Raphael.

II. Contour

But even supposing that the imitation of Nature could supply all the artist wants, she never could bestow the precision of Contour, that characteristic distinction of the ancients.

The noblest Contour unites or circumscribes every part of the most perfect Nature, and the ideal beauties in the figures of the Greeks; or rather, contains them both. Euphranor, famous after the epoch of Zeuxis, is said to have first ennobled it.

Many of the moderns have attempted to imitate this Contour, but very few with success. The great Rubens is far from having attained either its precision or elegance, especially in the performances which he finished before he went to Italy, and studied the antiques.

The line by which Nature divides completeness from superfluity is but a small one, and, insensible as it often is, has been crossed even by the best moderns; while these, in shunning a meager Contour, became corpulent, those, in shunning that, grew lean.

Among them all, only Michael Angelo, perhaps, may be said to have attained the antique; but only in strong muscular figures, heroic frames; not in those of tender youth; nor in female bodies, which, under his bold hand, grew Amazons.

The Greek artist, on the contrary, adjusted his Contour, in every figure, to the breadth of a single hair, even in the nicest and most tiresome performances, as gems.

III. Drapery

By Drapery is to be understood all that the art teaches of covering the nudities, and folding the garments; and this is the third prerogative of the ancients.

The Greek Drapery, in order to help the Contour, was, for the most part, taken from thin and wet garments, which of course clasped the body, and discovered the shape. The robe of the Greek ladies was extremely thin; thence its epithet of Peplon.

In modern times the artists were forced to heap garments, and sometimes heavy ones, on each other, which of course could not fall into the flowing folds of the ancients. Hence the large-folded Drapery, by which the painter and sculptor may display as much skill as by the ancient manner. Carlo Maratta and Francesco Solimena may be called the chief masters of it: but the garments of the new Venetian school, by passing the bounds of nature and propriety, became stiff as brass.

IV. Expression

The last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works is a noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and Expression. As the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a great soul lies sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures.

'Tis in the face of Laocoön this soul shines with full lustre, not confined however to the face, amidst the most violent sufferings. Pangs piercing every muscle, every labouring nerve; pangs which we almost feel ourselves, while we consider--not the face, nor the most expressive parts--only the belly contracted by excruciating pains: these however, I say, exert not themselves with violence, either in the face or gesture. He pierces not heaven, like the Laocoön of Virgil; his mouth is rather opened to discharge an anxious overloaded groan, as Sadoleto says; the struggling body and the supporting mind exert themselves with equal strength, nay balance all the frame.

Laocoon suffers, but suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles: we weeping feel his pains, but wish for the hero's strength to support his misery.

The Expression of so great a soul is beyond the force of mere nature. lt was in his own mind the artist was to search for the strength of spirit with which he marked his marble. Greece enjoyed artists and philosophers in the same persons; and the wisdom of more than one Metrodorus directed art, and inspired its figures with more than common souls.

Had Laocoon been covered with a garb becoming an ancient sacrificer, his sufferings would have lost one half of their Expression. Bernini pretended to perceive the first effects of the operating venom in the numbness of one of the thighs.

Every action or gesture in Greek figures, not stamped with this character of sage dignity, but too violent, too passionate, was called "Parenthyrsos."

For, the more tranquillity reigns in a body, the fitter it is to draw the true character of the soul; which, in every excessive gesture, seems to rush from her proper centre, and being hurried away by extremes becomes unnatural. Wound up to the highest pitch of passion, she may force herself upon the duller eye; but the true sphere of her action is simplicity and calmness. In Laocoön sufferings alone had been Parenthyrsos; the artist therefore, in order to reconcile the significative and ennobling qualities of his soul, put him into a posture, allowing for the sufferings that were necessary, the next to a state of tranquillity: a tranquillity however that is characteristical: the soul will be herself--this individual--not the soul of mankind; sedate, but active; calm, but not indifferent or drowsy.

What a contrast! how diametrically opposite to this is the taste of our modern artists, especially the young ones! on nothing do they bestow their approbation, but contortions and strange postures, inspired with boldness; this they pretend is done with spirit, with Franchezza. Contrast is the darling of their ideas; in it they fancy every perfection. They fill their performances with comet-like excentric souls, despising every thing hut an Ajax or a Capaneus.

Arts have their infancy as well as men; they begin, as well as the artist, with froth and bombast.

In all human actions flutter and rashness precede, sedateness and solidity follow: but time only can discover, and the judicious will admire these only: they are the characteristics of great masters; violent passions run away with their disciples.

This noble simplicity and sedate grandeur is also the true characteristic mark of the best and maturest Greek writings, of the epoch and school of Socrates. Possessed of these qualities Raphael became eminently great, and he owed them to the ancients.

That great soul of his, lodged in a beauteous body, was requisite for the first discovery of the true character of the ancients: he first felt all their beauties, and (what he was peculiarly happy in!) at an age when vulgar, unfeeling, and half-moulded souls overlook every higher beauty.

Mengs, Anton Raphael,
Portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (?),  1774 - 1776
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

            Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717-1768)
           Edle Einfalt und stille Größe

            Das allgemeine vorzügliche Kennzeichen der griechischen Meisterstücke ist endlich
              eine edle Einfalt, und eine stille Größe, sowohl in der Stellung als im Ausdrucke.
              So wie die Tiefe des Meers allezeit ruhig bleibt, die Oberfläche mag noch so wüten,
              ebenso zeiget der Ausdruck in den Figuren der Griechen bei allen Leidenschaften eine
              große und gesetzte Seele.

            Diese Seele schildert sich in dem Gesicht des Laokoons, und nicht in dem Gesichte allein,
              bei dem heftigsten Leiden. Der Schmerz, welcher sich in allen Muskeln und Sehnen des
              Körpers entdecket, und den man ganz allein, ohne das Gesicht und andere Teile zu betrachten,
              an dem schmerzlich eingezogenen Unterleibe beinahe selbst zu empfinden glaubet; dieser Schmerz,
              sage ich, äußert sich dennoch mit keiner Wut in dem Gesichte und in der ganzen Stellung. Er
              erhebet kein schreckliches Geschrei, wie Vergil von seinem Laokoons singet: Die Öffnung des
              Mundes gestattet es nicht; es ist vielmehr ein ängstliches und beklemmtes Seufzen ... Der Schmerz
              des Körpers und die Größe der Seele sind durch den ganzen Bau der Figur mit gleicher
              Stärke ausgeteilet und gleichsam abgewogen.

            Laokoon leidet, ... sein Elend gehet uns bis an die Seele; aber wir wünschten, wie dieser große Mann,
              das Elend ertragen zu können.

            Der Ausdruck einer so großen Seele gehet weit über die Bildung der schönen
              Natur: Der Künstler musste die Stärke des Geistes in sich selbst fühlen, welche er
              seinem Marmor einprägete. Griechenland hatte Künstler und Weltweisen in einer
              Person ... . Die Weisheit reichte der Kunst die Hand, und blies den Figuren derselben
              mehr als gemeine Seelen ein.

            Unter einem Gewande, welches der Künstler dem Laokoon als einem Priester hätte
              geben sollen, würde uns sein Schmerz nur halb so sinnlich gewesen sein. Bernini hat
              sogar den Anfang der Wirkung des Gifts der Schlange in dem Schenkel des
              Laokoons an der Erstarrung desselben entdecken wollen.

            Alle Handlungen und Stellungen der griechischen Figuren, die mit diesem Charakter
              der Weisheit nicht bezeichnet, sondern gar zu feurig und zu wild waren, verfielen in
              einen Fehler, den die alten Künstler Parenthyrsis (= übertriebenes, unpassendes Pathos
              - d.V.) nannten.

              Je ruhiger der Stand des Körpers ist, desto geschickter ist er, den wahren Charakter
              der Seele zu schildern: in allen Stellungen, die von dem Stande der Ruhe zu sehr
              abweichen, befindet sich die Seele nicht in einem gewaltsamen und erzwungenen
              Zustande. Kenntlicher und bezeichnender wird die Seele in heftigen Leidenschaften;
              groß aber und edel ist sie in dem Stande der Einheit, in dem Stande der Ruhe. Im
              Laokoon würde der Schmerz, allein gebildet, Parenthyrsis gewesen sein; der Künstler
              gab ihm daher, um das Bezeichnende und das Edle der Seele in eins zu vereinigen, eine Aktion,
              die dem Stande der Ruhe in solchem Schmerze der nächste war. Aber in dieser Ruhe muss die
              Seele durch Züge, die ihr und keiner andern Seele eigen sind, bezeichnet werden,
              um sie ruhig, aber zugleich wirksam, stille, aber nicht gleichgültig oder schläfrig zu bilden.

              Aus: Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst
              von Johann Joachim Winckelman

     Simon Richter. "Laocoon's Two Bodies," and "Winckelmann: Laocoon and the Eunuch."
     Laocoon's Body and the Aesthetics of Pain: Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, Moritz, Goethe.
     Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1992. 13ñ37, 38ñ61.

                IN "LAOCOON'S TWO BODIES" Simon Richter re-establishes the
                history of the Laocoon statue and demonstrates how its own
                discovery and rediscovery, placement and displacement, damage
                and rebuilding have intensified its interest as a focus of German
                aesthetic criticism. He traces classical, medieval, and Renaissance
                accounts of the statue and also chronicles its restoration, which
                changed the gesture of Laocoon's right arm from extended to
                bent. Various meditations on authenticity may be derived from
                this historical inquiry. More important to Richter, however, is a
                renewed emphasis on the pain that the five critics he examines
                see or fail (or refuse) to see implicit in what each posits as an
                example of Classical beauty.
                    The following chapter, "Winckelmann: Laocoon and the
                Eunuch",  makes a startling case about the material motivations
                of the critic who set this statue adrift in the sea of German
                letters. In the context that Richter establishes throughout the
                chapter, the "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" that
                Winckelmann famously attributed to the Laocoon is not a bland
                appreciation of the Classical form, but a valorization of the
                ability to conceal pain in blankness and silenceówhich
                Winckelmann read into the stature. "Representation depends on
                resistance. Though pain and the soul's efforts to conceal pain are
                violently opposed, it is only in their mutual tension that
                representation takes place." In other words, the harmony and
                balance often employed as the definition of Classical art are
                reflected in emotional content (pain and stoicism) as well as
                form (symmetry).
                    This is a kind of high-art version of "Pinch me. I must be
                dreaming." This particular argument is very well laid out and an
                intriguing read. Richter's take on Lessing and euphemism is less
                persuasive. Richter's continual return to a meditation on the
                statue of Laocoon itself seems to orient criticism in men's
                reaction to objects deliberately.  He does not slip into an
                accidental or negligent privileging of the text over the image.
                Instead, through all the chapters his book, he keeps the tension
                between text and image apparent to the reader.

The Germanic Review, Wntr 1995 v70 n1 p34(2)
Simon Richter, Laocoon's Body and the Aesthetics of Pain: Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, Moritz, Goethe.
(book review) Eva Knodt.

                                  Focusing on German classicism's troubled love affair with the human body, this
                                  provocatively argued study seeks to corroborate a suspicion that the eighteenth
                                  century's aesthetic celebration of the body was inseparable from the story of its
                                  suppression. A revised version of the author's dissertation, Laocoon's Body and the
                                  Aesthetics of Pain recontextualizes the Laocoon debate with a keen eye for its hidden
                                  dimensions and unintended side-effects. In a series of close readings of texts by
                                  Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder, Moritz, and Goethe, Richter mounts accumulating
                                  evidence to make a case against "aesthetic theory's cruelty to the body" (59). As these
                                  "eccentric" readings conjure up a series of unclassical counterimages of the Laocoon -
                                  "the castrato, the crucified Christ, the animal in Haller's clinic, the victim of rape or
                                  torture" - the book as a whole passionately reenacts the violent gestures of the
                                  Laocoon statue itself, slowly "encircl[ing] the aesthetic discourse in order finally to
                                  attack it at its center, the point of pain" (11).

                                  It is this passion that accounts for some of Richter's best insights; yet at the same time,
                                  it pushes him toward conclusions that threaten to compromise his entire argument. For
                                  example, he offers a startling explanation for one of the most enigmatic expressions of
                                  Winckelmann's aesthetics, the notion of beauty as Unbezeichnung. Placed against the
                                  eighteenth-century culture of the castrati, this expression becomes readable as an
                                  aesthetic euphemism for castration: beauty is pain made invisible. Central for such a
                                  reading is a passage from the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterturns that describes an
                                  ancient fresco depicting an erotic scene between Ganymede and Jupiter. The painting
                                  turned out to be a forgery, which left Winckelmann's aesthetics, as it were, hanging in
                                  the air. But does this mean that his "entire vision of antiquity [was] seriously
                                  compromised" (42-43)?

                                  Or consider the case of Lessing. Following David Wellbery's by now canonical reading
                                  of Laokoon, Richter turns to Wie die Alien den Tod gebildet for further evidence of
                                  Lessing's "fascinated abhorrence of the dead body" (191). Once again, euphemism
                                  figures prominently in the discussion, this time as "the primary trope" for the "denial of
                                  corporeality and death" (62-63). Herder is no exception here. Although he expressly
                                  sought "to ground all human activity in the body" (19), he is found "faltering," his
                                  discourse literally "passing out" when confronted with the body's "dark abyss," not
                                  without having profoundly "misread" Haller's notion of Reiz as a mere trope in a
                                  manner that again smacks suspiciously of euphemism. When euphemism gets such a
                                  bad name, one cannot help wondering who or what is being put on trial here. By the
                                  time we are almost ready to accept the sad truth that Herder, too, was driven by a
                                  deep "repulsion for the body" (106), the question as to what a less-repressive response
                                  to the body would have to look like has become perhaps the most pressing issue raised
                                  by Richter's study.

                                  The answer to this question is found where one would least expect it, in the epitome of
                                  German classicism, in Goethe himself. This is all the more striking seeing as the
                                  preceding chapter on Moritz goes out of its way to cast Goethe as the villain, the
                                  perpetrator of rape and violence, The trouble with "the victim's discourse" is that its
                                  accusations remain mute, woven into the fabric of texts that conceal the "record of
                                  Goethe's crime against Moritz" (144). Once, however, we turn to Goethe's Uber
                                  Laokoon, we find the "truth" about the body right at the text's surface. Goethe's essay,
                                  we are told, "is resistant to the subversion effected in the others" for the simple reason
                                  that the "essay itself is profoundly anti-classical and requires no subversive reading to
                                  show it. There is no classical center in this essay; the heterogeneous discourse is its
                                  center" (166).

                                  This unexpected turn may make for an effective denouement, but it runs the risk of
                                  replacing one myth, the nineteenth-century (!) myth of German classicism with
                                  another, the twentieth-century myth of the "text without blind spots" (de Man).
                                  Meanwhile, the eighteenth century has fallen through the cracks of a reading that
                                  reinstates the logic of representation, as it were, after the critical fact; that is, after this
                                  logic has been profoundly problematized by the very thinkers whose aesthetic
                                  "theories" Richter feels compelled to "deconstruct." Whereas Lessing radicalized the
                                  question of how the ancients represented death in order to probe the very limits of
                                  representation, Richter ponders the relative merits of alternative representational
                                  possibilities; as if the Christian image of a skeleton could bring us any closer to an
                                  understanding of death than the ancient image of a sleeping body. And whereas
                                  Herder theorized the inescapable violence of language as its constitutive, yet
                                  inaccessible, origin, Richter chastises him for denying the body, as if the causal (literal?)
                                  narratives of scientific discourse imply a somehow more "affirmative" attitude toward
                                  the body than those of an aesthetics based on analogy and metaphor (96). To make
                                  these aesthetic "theories" confess their crimes, Richter must first center them as
                                  theories in a manner that disregards their fragmented vulnerability, their subversive
                                  irony, their very lack of a center.

                                  In its failure to confront in full the complex epistemological issues raised by the
                                  Laocoon debate, Richter's study strikes me as symptomatic for a brand of cultural
                                  criticism that offers a radically domesticated version of deconstruction as the latest
                                  breakthrough in German studies. It is one thing to trace the supplementary logic of
                                  binary hierarchizations in the consciously self-implicative fashion that characterizes
                                  readings performed in a rigorously deconstructive mode. It is quite another thing to
                                  overturn these hierarchies in the, manner of a critique of ideology that capitalizes on
                                  latencies without accounting for its own privileged insights. We are repeatedly told that
                                  "[o]nly in the twentieth century, and largely among non-Germans [?]" has it become
                                  possible to discern the "wild discrepancy" between the real and ideal Laocoon. Why
                                  this should be so, or how this assertion matches the concluding chapter on Goethe,
                                  remains the author's secret.

                                  These reservations notwithstanding, Richter's study makes for fascinating reading -
                                  thanks in large measure to his unusual contextualizations - even if one happens to
                                  disagree with most of its interpretive presuppositions. Richter clearly overstates his
                                  case, but he does so with force. The truth, as Lessing suggested, will take care of itself.

                                  EVA KNODT Indiana University

G. E. Lessing, Laocoön:  An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, 1766.

                   In 1760 Lessing went to Breslau as secretary to General Tauentzien, the
                   military governor of Silesia. He studied philosophy and aesthetics in the Breslau
                   libraries, the result being the great treatise Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen
                  der Malerei und Poesie (1766; "Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and
                   Poetry"). Here he took issue with the contemporary art historian Johann
                   Winckelmann, specifically over his interpretation of the "Laocoon," a famous
                   sculpture of Hellenistic times (c. 1st century BC), which shows the priest
                   Laocoon and his sons as they are about to be killed by the serpents that hold
                   them entwined. In the Laokoon Lessing attempted to fundamentally define
                   the separate functions of painting and of poetry. He pointed out that whereas
                   painting is bound to observe spatial proximity--and must, therefore, select and
                   render the seminal and most expressive moment in a chain of events--poetry
                   has the task of depicting an event organically and in its temporal sequence. The
                   essence of poetry thus lies not in description but in the representation of the
                   transitory, of movement.

IL LAOCOONTE E L'ARCHEOLOGIA:
Lessing, Winckelmann, Goethe e la visione dell'arte classica nel XVIII secolo

Ciro ROBOTTI, Punti di vista. Forma, percezione e comunicazione visiva,
Lecce (Edizioni del Grifo) 1999, pp. 131-151.

Summary

In the 18th century - when ancient art history was becoming consolidated as a discipline, moving in a jumble
of metaphysical theories inherited from Counter-Reformation moralistic spirituality - the bases for a more
correct critical-artistic methodology were laid particularly by Lessing, Winckelmann and Goethe. Their
common denominator was direct experience, autopsy, i.e. looking at the works with their own eyes. Indeed,
what seems to be methodologically most lasting and valuable in their teaching can be summed up in
Winckelmann's simple exhortation: "Go and look !"

http://www.pausania.org/parola/parola4.asp

Hubert Robert (1733-1808), The Discovery of the Laocön, Canvas. H. 1, 940 ; L. 1, 625. 1773.
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

  Plus de deux siècles et demi après la découverte du Laocoon, Hubert Robert choisit
  d'illustrer cet événement historique.  Son úuvre témoigne de la fascination exercée
  encore à son époque par ce célèbre antique.  Guidé par une imagination pleine de fantaisie,
  il réinterprète totalement l'épisode.  L'action se déroule dans une immense galerie vue en
  perspective. L'artiste plonge cet espace aux proportions gigantesques dans un climat
  dramatique par une violente lumière latérale.  La célèbre sculpture antique, presque perdue
  dans cette volumineuse basilique est cependant mise en valeur par l'éclairage.  On distingue
  dans la pénombre, au premier plan, les ouvriers manúuvrant le cabestan qui permet de révéler le marbre.

from The Royal Encyclopedia 1788 - 90

William Blake, Jehovah with his Sons, Adam and Satan, engraving, ca. 1820

     If Morality was Christianity, Socrates was the Savior.

     Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations.

     Spiritual War: Israel deliver'd from Egypt, is Art deliver'd from Nature and Imitation.

     Where any view of Money exists, Art cannot be carried on, but War only (Read Matthew,
     c. x: 9 & 10 v.) by pretenses to the Two Impossibilities, Chastity & Abstinence, Gods of the Heathen.

     The True Christian Charity not dependent on Money (the life's blood of poor families), that
     is, on Caesar or Empire or Natural Religion: Money, which is The Great Satan or Reason,
     the Root of Good & Evil In the Accusation of Sin.

     Good & Evil are Riches & Poverty, a Tree of Misery, propagating Generation and Death.

     A Poet, a Painter, an Architect: the Man Or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.

     The Unproductive Man is not a Christian, much less the Destroyer.

     You must leave Fathers & Mothers & Houses & Lands if they stand in the way of Art.

     Prayer is the study of Art.
     Praise is the Practice of Art.
     Fasting &c., all relate to Art.
     The outward Ceremony is Antichrist.

     The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination, that is, {God himself}
     {the Divine Body} Jesus: we are his Members.
     It manifests itself in his Works of Art (In Eternity All is Vis