Laocoon Group

Patinated bronze, base - black marble with white veins; height 46 cm, width 33.7 cm, depth 15.5 cm.
On the back in a circle an illegible foundry mark; above, hand-carved inscription: "Lisippo" (!?!).
Western Europe, 19th/20th century casting.
Reduction of a Hellenistic sculpture; its marble original, 2.42 meters high, found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome in 1506 - is in the Museo Pio-Clementino, part of the Vatican Museums. It depicts Laocoon of Troy - a priest of Apollo - and his sons, Eltron and Melantos, attacked by sea serpents.
There are disputes over the authorship of the sculpture; according to Pliny, it was created by Rhodes artists Agesander and his sons Polydorus and Athenodoros. There is also a theory that it is a brilliant forgery by Michelangelo.