Trojan statue ‘forged in 1506’

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April 24, 2005


Sarah Baxter, New York



A SINUOUS sculpture regarded for centuries as one of the most stirring of the ancient world may be a forgery perpetrated by the Renaissance artist Michelangelo, according to an American art historian.

The Laocoon, depicting the death struggle of a Trojan priest and his two sons against writhing sea serpents, was unearthed to great excitement in an underground chamber in a vineyard outside Rome in 1506.

Michelangelo was among the first to “authenticate” the find as a statue described by Pliny the Elder, the 1st-century Roman scholar, as a “work superior to any painting or bronze” and ascribed to three craftsmen from Rhodes. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Laocoon is punished for warning the Trojans against the Greeks’ gift of a wooden horse.

The sculpture was acquired almost immediately by Pope Julius II and remains in the Vatican museum.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1582490,00.html