Il braccio mancante. I restauri del Laocoonte (1506-1957). Nuova edizione aggiornata

The Laocoon-group, uncovered in Rome on the Caelian hill on January 14th 1506, is one of the most famous and much-admired scultpures of the Antiquity, because both his artistic quality and Pliny the Elder’s praise for being «opus omnibus picturae ac statuariae artis praeferendum». At the time of his discovery the group was nearly intact, apart from Laocoon and his elder son’s right arms and the lef hand of the younger. The restoration of Laocoon’s arm has provided antiquarians and philosophers with much scope for arguments up to 19th century and was then passionately discussed by modern achaeologists. The book proceeds to a systematic collation of textual and visual sources, both published and unpublished, in order to reconstruct the very sequence of the restorations. It results a number of yet unknown restorations between ca 1520 and 1957. The work is completed with a catalogue of modern images of the Laocoon-group by nearby 200 items (drawings, etchings, plaster casts, natural and reduced copies, medals).