Laocoon

The Museo Ginori’s Laocoon group in plaster is a reduction of the monumental ancient marble statue in the Vatican Museums, in the reinterpretation (Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi) commissioned in 1520 by Pope Leo X to Baccio Bandinelli, as a tribute to Francesco I, King of France. 

The Florentine version differs from the Vatican group in the pose of the Trojan priest’s right arm and in the knot of the serpent’s coils that entwine him because at the time the original arm had not yet been recovered.

In the Inventory of Models of the Manifattura di Doccia (1791-1806) there is a record of a Laocoön in wax with its form, listed as the work of the late Baroque sculptor Giovan Battista Foggini, whose son Vincenzo was paid by the manufactory in 1748 for creating this cast. 

Mentioned as a copy of Foggini in the 19^th century inventory named Gallery of Models, this plaster - presumably made to replace the deteriorated wax model - shares many points of contact with a bronze example, today part of a private collection. 

Recently Dimitrios Zikos identified the young Filippo della Valle as the author of the model from which the plaster cast presented here was derived. Zikos dated it before Della Valle’s departure for Rome, when he was still working in the workshop of his uncle Giovan Battista Foggini, his first master.

An 18^th century porcelain version of this model is now in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan.