Un Laocoonte di bronzo dalla Galleria di Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia

This study focuses on a bronze head of Laocoon, recently discovered in a deposit of the Museo di Antichità in Turin, which can be identified with the one displayed in the Galleria of Charles Emmanuel I Duke of Savoy at the beginning of the 17th century. This might be the same Laocoon’s head once belonging to the Maffei collection in Rome, as is suggested by a precise description by Ulisse Aldrovandi, who saw this piece in 1550. Due to its fragmentary appearance, this Renaissance head possibly entered the Savoy collection as an ancient piece. In the Galleria it was displayed together with a small bronze replica of the Vatican group of Laocoon, thus imitating Isabella d'Este’s paragone between ancient and modern art. The influence of Isabella’s Grotta is also documented by an other bronze statuette of a satyr playing the flute, still unknown and kept in the same Museum deposit in Turin: black patina and gilded hair and tail remind the typical technique used by Antico. A replica of this statuette, now in the Frick Collection, supports the attribution of the Turin piece either to Francesco da Sant’Agata or to Vittore Gambello