Laocoon and His Sons

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Laocoon and His Sons by Baccio Bandinelli
Galleria degli Uffizi (Uffizi Gallery)
Piazzale degli Uffizi
Florence, January 2020

“The monumental Laocoon Group, also called Laocoon and His Sons, by Baccio Bandinelli (Firenze 1493-1560) – from the Hellenistic original brought to light in Rome on 14 January, 1506 in the vineyard of Felice de Fredis, near Titus Thermae on the Opium Hill – depicts the Trojan priest Laocoon and his two sons ensnared in the toils of the sea serpents sent by Poseidon. In the original, that as recorded by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia had been made from one single block of marble, the priest’s right arm was missing, and Vasari’s Life of Baccio Bandinelli tells us he made an arm in wax to replace the lost one and used it as a model for his copy of the Laocoon, commissioned in 1520 by Pope Leo X de’ Medici as a gift to King Francis I. Baccio made his copy using three marble blocks. He decorated the pedestal front with a naturalistic open scroll with folding lines, and the sides with the emblem of pope Clement VII: a transparent globe crossed by a ray of sun that sets fire to a tree, and the pope’s motto ‘Candor illaesus’.” (Laocoon Group, Uffizi Gallery)