Laocoön and His Sons

Dug up in a Roman vineyard in 1506 while Michelangelo was working nearby — he ran to see it, and the influence on the Sistine ceiling was immediate. Laocoön, the Trojan priest who warned against the wooden horse, is being strangled with his sons by sea serpents sent by the gods. The muscular anguish, the diagonals of the coils, the open-mouthed scream — this is the founding statue of Western pathos. Pliny called it 'a work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced.'