Showing off Laocoon

I heartily disapprove of those people who sign up for a three day conference, but only show their faces in the conference room to give their own paper, not bothering to listen to what anyone else has to say. It’s a bit like teaching: part of the point of a conference is being there, the face to face encounters between the lectures, and what you have to say about other people’s ideas.

That said, I do think – as I’ve hinted before, when I paid a flying visit to Niagara Falls  – that playing hooky for a session or two is a forgivable crime. So on the Saturday morning of the “Oriental Religions” conference in Rome, I gave myself some time off to go to the Vatican Museums.

Visiting the Vatican is usually a struggle. Maybe some people know a secret that I don’t. But every time I choose to go, there is a huge queue simply to get in to the ticket office, the crowds inside mean that progress around the museum is slow (especially if you are anywhere near the route to the Sistine Chapel) and the restaurant is lousy.

But what attracted me to go back again was a new exhibition (it actually opened that very Saturday) of the most famous ancient Roman statue ever: the Laocoon. 

This is an extraordinary marble creation depicting the Trojan priest who warned his compatriots against accepting the gift-horse, plus his two young sons, being killed by snakes (as told in Virgil’s Aeneid). It was dug up in Rome exactly 500 years ago in 1506 (hence the show), apparently in the presence of Michelangelo himself. Or, at least, that was the Renaissance urban myth.

Practicalities first. When I got out of the cab, the queue was enormous (if you know the area, it was stretching back almost into Piazza Risorgimento). I really didn’t have the time to wait, so the moral dilemma was whether to jump it; the practical one was how. Moral doubts, I am afraid, were quickly dispatched, so I ambled along the queue until I found a place near the front where I could ‘blend in” amongst some chatty Japanese too busy to notice.

In fact, I needn’t have bothered with subterfuge. When I got inside, I found that the Laocoon show was in a separate gallery before the ticket office and so it was entirely free. I suspect that if you just walk up to the front of the queue and say that you’ve come to see the exhibition only, they let you straight in anyway.

For anyone interested in the Roman sculpture, it’s really worth seeing (it runs till the end of February). For a start, it displays the sculpture itself in a striking temporary installation. Of course, part of the charm of the Laocoon is that it is still displayed in the gentle natural light of the Belvedere courtyard in the Vatican, where it has resided almost continuously since it was discovered (apart from a brief excursion to the Louvre, courtesy of Napoleon). But it is interesting to see what it looks like (answer: fabulous) if you give it the modern spot light treatment.

For connoisseurs, there is also the first chance to see it right next to a sculpture discovered in a seaside cave at Sperlonga, outside Rome, in the 1950s – a head of Odysseus from a vast (though now pretty ruined) group depicting the blinding of the Cyclops, Polyphemus. In a lucky coincidence, an inscription found on the site names the same sculptors as the elder Pliny, writing in the first century AD, says sculpted the Laocoon. Here their work can be directly compared.

But most of the fun of the show comes from looking at what later artists made of the sculpture. The discovery of the Laocoon effectively kick started art history and art theory in the West (the problem it raised was how on earth we could aesthetically admire a work of art that depicted a dreadful and painful death). And it was copied, parodied and coveted for centuries.

There was also intense competition to restore the lost arm of the main figure. I wrote about this a few years ago in the TLS. It was good to see here the truncated bit of elbow, which is often said to be Michelangelo's abortive attempt at restoration. Apart from that, my favourite things were a  clever drawing of Napoleon’s triumphal procession of the sculpture and other Italian art treasures into Paris, to fill up his new Louvre. And an unsettling engraving, once said to be by Titian, which shows Laocoon and his sons all transformed into monkeys.

It’s an attractive little exhibition – especially if you don’t have to queue for two hours to see it.

Comments

[Bryce]

There is at least one way to get into the Vatican Museums without queuing. All outside tour groups have to wait in line, but the Vatican also offers its own tours. You have to request the tour via fax and they will fax back a reservation confirmation. If you show that to the guards, they will let you right past the queue and into the museum (where you can buy an individual ticket rather than paying for and joining the tour). This may still be morally objectionable to some, but I find it preferable to jumping the queue.

[Hugo Wells]

I must have been lucky when I went to the Vatican Museum in September or October 2004. The queue to get in was quite short and neither the museum itself nor the Sistine Chapel were crowded.

[Brian O'Connor]

If you want to see a pretty decent copy of Laocoon, avoid queues (with their attendant moral dilemmas), whilst getting some rather bracing fresh air, you can see one in the Powerscourt Gardens, Co. Wicklow.

[Tamara]

Re: Lynn Catterson. In order to read a full "defense" of her "mad" (I quite agree) theory that the Laocoon was made by Michelangelo, see the journal Artibus et Historia: an art anthology (No. 52, 2005): p. 29-56. I was amused that she thought so little of the Sperlonga connection that she relegated it to a footnote (p. 51) where she describes the sculptural group as "Perhaps more aptly described as marble rubble ..."

Rubble, indeed, but at least one of those pieces merits more than a footnote in her argument.

[Mary]

For some reason Richard's link disappeared when I posted it. So here is Pope Benedict on the Laocoon:

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=22109

For Tom... sadly I have no secret about how to make the visit manageable. Other Italian Museums do an on-line booking system. It would be nice if the Vatican could do that.

[Richard]

Did your visit to the Vatican Museums work as a kind of subliminal evangelism? This seems to be the intention here (Pope Benedict reflects on the Laocoon exhibition):

It appears that the pope considers this approach especially suitable for those of suspicious minds: so, perfect for those hard-to-reach academics.

[Alex Drace-Francis]

it's OK Mary, I wasn't about to shop you to the Swiss Guard; when in the Vatican do as the Scousers do, that's my watchword. I was just unclear as to the measure of William's indignation.

[Tom]

Mary, I was hoping you might have come up with a way of getting into the Vatican Museum without standing in that queue. I was in Rome in May with my daughter and son-in-law and we queued for what seemed hours ending up in the Sistine Chapel at the mercy of rampaging hordes (if we had fallen over I am sure we would have been trampled to death) added to which the place was so ill-lit you could barely see anything. In fact I saw more of the Sistine Chapel in the Michelangelo exhibition at the BM earlier this year and without having to queue. I ended up not visiting the Vatican Museum as I was too exhausted by this stage. Perhaps I will try again next year and indulge in a bit of queue-jumping. Another gripe about the Vatican: being over 65 all the museums in Rome let me in for free on showing my passport - all except the Vatican that is, where there are no concessions whatever grrrrrr.

[Mary]

Guys -- I am making no pretence about my moral failing in queue jumping. As I said, I was let off the (moral) hook in the end -- when it turned out that I didn't need to queue at all. I am entering a guilty plea, but have no other offences to be taken into consideration. Honest guv.

[Alex Drace-Francis]

is 'quite rude' as rude as 'quite serious' is serious?

[William]

I can't believe you intended to cut the line. That's quite rude and I am being quite serious.

[Mary]

Clio. You are thinking of Lynn Catterson's (mad) theory that it was actually made by Michelangelo. It is discussed at

http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2005-05-03/grogan-michelangeloforgery

mary

[Clio]

Mary -- Didnt someone recently claim that the statue was a Renaissance fake? Is there anything about that in the show?