My Laocoön

"Analyzing the theme, provenance, and history of the Vatican Laocoon, Richard Brilliant traces the interpretation of this masterpiece of Greco-Roman sculpture through the ages, showing how these interpretations have shaped its reception. Several Laocoons are identified in this study: the alleged lost "Greek original"; the extant marbles sculpted in the first century; the sixteenth-century restoration and its affect; the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century topos of critical judgment; and the twentieth-century re-restored artifact of ancient art. Yet the Vatican Laocoon contains all of these…