Laocoön and his Sons by Giacomo Zoffoli (1731-1785)

This exceptional bronze group, executed in Rome in the second half of the 18th century, bears witness to the fascination with the Laocoön since its discovery on January 14, 1506 on the Esquiline, the site of Nero's Golden House and Titus' baths.

The Grand Tour, the initiatic journey undertaken by young English aristocrats, led to the development in Rome of workshops specializing in antique reproductions. The Zoffoli workshop was the first to receive its patent in 1775; this Laocoön (of which we have identified only two copies, including the one we are presenting) is one of the most prestigious pieces produced by the Zoffoli, as attested by their signature on its side.

1. The Laocoon, a famous group from Antiquity

Appearing in the Little Iliad by Arctinos of Miletus, an epic poet of the 8th or 7th century BC, and repeated in the famous account of Troy's destruction by Aeneas in Dido's palace, in Canto II of Virgil's Aeneid, the story of Laocoön is that of a priest of Poseidon (or Apollo) who dies smothered by two snakes emerging from the sea after warning the Trojans against the Trojan Horse, which had been deposited on the shore as an offering to Poseidon. His two accompanying sons also fall prey to the same monsters.

The discovery in 1506 of fragments of a colossal marble group depicting Lacoön was a real event: a link was immediately established with the statue mentioned by Pliny the Elder in Book XXVI of his Natural History. He claims to have seen a sculpture featuring Laocoön and his Sons caught in the rings of prodigious reptiles in the house of Titus, and attributes this sculpture to the three sculptors Hagèsandros, Polydôros and Athanadôros, all from Rhodes. However, the analysis of the monument reveals that, contrary to what Pliny the Elder wrote, it is composed of several blocks of marble, and not carved from a single block ("ex uno lapide"). This point has led to controversy over the exact nature of the discovery: was it indeed the marble admired by Pliny the Elder, or just a copy?

This controversy took a new turn after the discovery of a stone bearing the signatures of the three artists cited by Pliny the Elder in connection with the Laocoön, in the grotto of Sperlonga, south of Rome, which was part of a villa last built by the emperor Tiberius.

Since then, two main theories have been put forward, with no decisive evidence to support a definitive choice. For some, the Vatican marble is a copy made by Rhodian sculptors at the beginning of the 1er century, at the time of Tiberius, from a bronze (now lost) executed around 140 BC in Pergamon. This sculpture would then have been handed down to Titus. For the others, the Laocoon is indeed a creation produced between 40 and 20 BC by the three Rhodian sculptors established in Italy since the middle of the 1er century BC.

Whatever its date of creation, this sculpture was executed with immense virtuosity, and the sculptors succeeded in extracting complex, expressive forms from the marble that still touch us today. A tour de force without equal in antique statuary, this group has been the object of fascination ever since its creation, as evidenced by the admiration of Pliny the Elder, Michelangelo and Goethe.

2. An eventful history since its rediscovery

The genesis of the group's reconstruction from fragments found on the Esquiline is poorlydocumented, although the names of Baccio Bandinelli and Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli, one of Michelangelo's collaborators, have been put forward. The discovery by L. Pollack in 1905 of Laocoon's right arm amidst the antique debris of a Roman stonemason’s workshop remains an astonishing milestone in the reconstruction of the group. The arm was reinstalled as part of a complete restoration of the monumental group between 1957 and 1959 (as shown in the photograph below).

The more bent-back position of the arm placed Laocoön's hand at the nape of his neck. This position is more consistent with the strong contraction of his torso muscles. Our bronze is an interesting testimony of the historical state, prior to this reintegration, of this much-admired group since its rediscovery during the Renaissance.

The quality of the Laocoön has always aroused covetousness. The King of France Francis 1st wished to acquire it and Pope Clement VII proposed him a copy, which was completed by Baccio Bandinelli in 1525. The quality of this copy led the Pope to change his mind : this statue became part of his family's collections in Florence (where it is still kept at the Uffizi Museum) and Clement VII sent some other antique statues to the King. François 1st nevertheless obtained the right to have a plaster cast made around 1540, under the direction of Primaticcio, from which the bronze preserved until now at Château de Fontainebleau is derived.

Napoleon completed François 1st's dream and brought the Laocoön back to Paris to adorn the Louvre National Museum; however, the group was returned to the Vatican's Pio-Clementin Museum after the emperor's abdication in 1815.

3. A major source of inspiration since the Renaissance

The statue's impact on the history of the arts is considerable: while numerous sculptors (Sansovino, Susini...) created small-scale bronzes inspired by the Laocoön as early as the Renaissance, the group also greatly inspired draftsmen, engravers and painters through the distribution of these engravings. In addition to the Greco's Laocoön, Laocoön's position can also be found in paintings as diverse as Titian's Coronation of Thorns and Rubens' Hercules and Omphale, to name just two examples in the Louvre.

This vogue for the Laocoön was of course exacerbated when, in the second half of the 18th century, Rome became, along with Naples and ahead of Venice, the main destination for young aristocrats on their Grand Tour. A good illustration of this craze is Pompeo Batoni's portrait of Thomas Dundas, executed in 1764 in Rome, with the Laocoön in the background.

4. A masterpiece from the Zoffoli workshop, of outstanding rarity

The development of Grand Tour "tourism" also spawned a souvenir industry. Aimed at a wealthy clientele, they were often made from precious materials (marble, bronze, hard stones, porcelain). The Zoffoli brothers were the first to open a workshop offering bronze reproductions of antiques, followed by the Righetti family, who obtained their patent in 1783, then by the Volpato family, who founded a porcelain factory in 1785, and finally by Giuseppe Boschi, who was active between 1785 and 1810.

The quality of the Zoffoli brothers' bronzes had already impressed their contemporaries. In 1795, Charles Heathcote Tatham wrote to Henry Holland: "the bronze used by the Italians [in comparison with French foundries] is of the best metal, with what they call a patina, meaning the outward color, of a good nature [...] and above all their execution is superlatively good, having artists employed who study the antique with attention and model with great ingenuity and taste".

As evidence of the Zoffoli brothers' activity, we have a catalog of their productions , in which our Laocoön appears at the top of the list, to the right of the no less famous Apollo of Belvedere. Offered at a price of 50 gold sequins, while the Apollo cost was only 16 sequins, the Laocoön was the second most expensive item, after the statues of Orestes and Electra from the Ludovisi collection, which were offered at 80 sequins (no copy of which has been found).

This high price probably explains why so few copies are known today, as we have only found another one, also signed by Zoffoli, with a slightly different signature. At the time of its presentation for sale at Sotheby's in London in April 2004, the catalog editor believed it to be a unique example, based on his exhaustive survey of major collections of Zoffoli bronzes, such as those held at Saltram Park (Devon - UK), the Nationalsmuseum in Stockholm (Sweden) and Schloss Wörlitz (Dessau - Germany).

Also featured prominently in this catalog was a pair of Centaurs, known as Capitoline or Furietti (after their first owner), which was sold for 45 gold sequins. A pair of these Centaurs sold for the equivalent of €156,750 on November 9, 2012 at Sotheby's.

This pair of centaurs has in common with our Laocoön a superb black patina, under which the orange sheen of the bronze can be seen. The quality of execution of the details in our copy, which was probably achieved by the meticulous assembly of 6 or 7 separately cast pieces, is remarkable from every point of view. Below are a few photos (featuring the head of Laocoön, the one of his son or details of the snake, the toenails, and the finesse of the armature) which illustrate the extraordinary quality of execution of this piece.

Main bibliographical references :
H. Honour - Bronze statuettes by Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli - The Connoisseur, November 1961, pages 198 - 205
F. Haskell & N. Penny - Taste and the Antique - Newhaven & London 1981
I. Pfeiffer - Giacomo Zoffoli. Kleinbronzen aus Schloss Wörlitz - Weltkuntz - December 24, 1996 pages 3232 - 3234
J.P. Cuzin, J.R. Gaborit, A. Pasquier - D'après l'Antique - catalog of the Musée du Louvre exhibition (October 16, 2000 to January 15, 2001) - RMN, 2012
A. Hilliam - Longing for the Antique: Collecting the bronze statuettes of eighteenth-century Rome - Master of Studies, University of Oxford 2013