Reconsidering Laocoon: El Greco between painting and sculpture

• Autores: Noriko Matsubara
• Localización: Estudios de arte español y latinoamericano, Nº. 2, 2001, págs. 9-18
• Idioma: varios idiomas
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The paragone, controversy over the preeminence between the arts of painting and sculpture, was one of the major interest of the Italian Renaissance artists. It is not surprising, thus, that El Greco, with almost ten years of artistic experience in Italy, commented in favour of painting on his own copies of Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture and Vasari’s Lives, emphasizing the difficulty of imitating natural colors. However, we should not take this as his negative attitude toward the art of sculpture. In fact, the development of his peculiar painting style was highly dependent on the study of sculptural works, taking full advantage of them pursuit of the perfect depiction of human bodies, which he believed to be the common purpose of both arts.

    His remarkable work both for its subject matter and representation, the Laocoon, marks the climax of his constant efforts for this purpose. Simultaneously, it could be interpreted as a “visual paragone” where he challenged the prestigious antique sculpture of the same theme in the Vatican, by combining his mastery of drawing –drawing in the Venetian sense of the term- and coloring, which is one the painting’s specialties.

    Although we have no direct documentary evidence in support of this interpretation, it is worth noting that it was exactly when Spain was witnessing a growing interest in the social status of the artists and subsequently in the paragone controversy that El Greco painted his Laocoon.