During the Trojan War, the priest Laocoön angered the Greek gods, who sent snakes to kill him and his two sons. The legend became popular after a monumental, ancient marble sculpture of Laocoön and his sons was unearthed in Rome in 1506.
Laocoön is El Greco’s only known mythological painting. He set the scene not in Greece, but in the city of Toledo, Spain, his adopted home. El Greco felt that art should engage the mind and not just copy nature. He used elongated, twisting figures, distorted space, and clashing colours to express emotions vividly.
🎨 El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541-1614),
Laocoön, c. 1610/1614. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
The Arts of Golden Age Spain and the Hispanic World 