Laokoon

The group of statues of Laocoön and His Sons in the Vatican Museums is considered one of the most famous sculptures in the world. However, it was only since its retrieval in Renaissance Rome that it became a celebrated “master work” thanks to the fundamental re-interpretation of its appearance. This transformation of antiquity has a lasting effect to this very day: What is considered an antique group of statues really is a work of Early Modern times. The antique sculpture looked completely different and conveyed a totally different appreciation of Laocoön and his atrocious death. With the help of most recent digital techniques and results of modern research the appearance of the antique Laocoön can be reconstructed. Thereby, an unknown monument is revealed whose “mastery” operated rather secretly and whose interpretation fostered quite different forms of appropriation and reception than the ones experienced by the transformed group in Early Modern times. It is only by the awareness of the entanglement of ancient concept and Early Modern transformation that we succeed in approaching a differentiated historical understanding of the group of statues and their double history.