[CPProt.net] An Ancient Masterpieceor a Master's Forgery?

Mon Apr 18 08:05:30 CEST 2005

An Ancient Masterpiece or a Master's Forgery?
By KATHRYN SHATTUCK 

 scholar has suggested that "Laocoön," a fabled sculpture whose unearthing
in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the
nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery - possibly by
Michelangelo himself. 

Her contention has stirred some excitement and considerable exasperation
among art historians in the Classical and Renaissance fields. Many other
challenges to accepted attributions have faded quickly into oblivion.

The scholar advancing the theory, Lynn Catterson, a summer lecturer in art
history at Columbia University, presented her argument in a talk at the
university's Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America on April 6.
Maneuvering through a wealth of material - including Michelangelo's
drawings, records of his banking activity and his acknowledged reputation as
an avid seeker of renown and wealth - she said, "He had the motives and the
means." 

The strikingly naturalistic sculpture, 951/2 inches tall, depicts a deadly
attack on the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons by writhing sea snakes
dispatched by Athena - or, some say, Poseidon - after Laocoön warned against
admitting the Trojan horse during the siege of Troy. It resides in the
Vatican Museums in Rome.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Catterson cited a pen study by Michelangelo
dating from 1501 depicting the rear of a male torso that resembles the back
of the "Laocoön" - and Michelangelo's documented finesse at copying. 

"That the Laocoön was carved by Michelangelo explains why then, and why now,
its effect is mesmerizing," she said.

Richard Brilliant, Anna S. Garbedian emeritus professor of the humanities at
Columbia and an authority on classical antiquities - his works include "My
Laocoön: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks" (University
of California Press, 2000) - said that Dr. Catterson's contention was
"noncredible on any count." 

For one thing, he said, "she made absolutely no reference to ancient
sculptures that could be related to the 'Laocoön,' " including a large body
of ancient fragments found just before World War II at Sperlonga, a site
near Rome where Tiberius had a luxurious villa, that refer specifically to
episodes of the Trojan war. 

Some scholars have also found fault in relating the "Laocoön" to the
Michelangelo drawing of a torso, now at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.

"To my eye, the Michelangelo drawing does not bear a close resemblance to
the torso of the Vatican Laocoön," said Katherine E. Welch, an associate
professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and an expert in
Hellenistic and Roman imperial antiquities, in an e-mail message. "The
latter is distinguished by a vigorous torsion or twist, which is lacking in
the drawing."

The "Laocoön" was placed at the Vatican Museums by Pope Julius II not long
after it was discovered on Jan. 14, 1506, on the Esquiline Hill. Upon
hearing the news, the pope immediately dispatched the architect Giuliano da
Sangallo to view it; Sangallo brought along his colleague Michelangelo
Buonarroti. The men identified the statue as that described by the
first-century Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History,"
who called it "a work superior to any painting and any bronze," one "carved
from a single block in accordance with an agreed plan by those eminent
craftsmen Hagesander, Polydorus and Athenodorus, all of Rhodes." 

Dr. Catterson, 48, said she did not set out to debunk scholarship on the
"Laocoön" when she settled on a dissertation topic seven years ago: "How
come Michelangelo was a sculptor? Who trained him?"

Her curiosity was soon aroused. As a young artist under the patronage of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, Michelangelo had witnessed the Medici family's
willingness to spend considerable sums on ancient Greek or Roman objects,
which he would have had ample opportunity to study and perhaps try to
recreate, she said.

He was an astute forger who earned his Bacchus commission after a carved
sleeping Cupid that he had buried in the ground to "age" had been sold to a
wealthy cardinal in 1495.

Then there was recent scholarship on bank withdrawals and deposits between
1498 and 1501 that suggests that the sculptor was buying chunks of marble
while accumulating substantial income that could not be accounted for, Dr.
Catterson said, and several letters from Michelangelo to his father that
spoke of some marbles but failed to explain how he was using the others.

Dr. Catterson suggests that Michelangelo, a manic worker who carved on as
few as three hours of sleep a night, would have had the time to create the
"Laocoön" while working simultaneously on the "Pietà," for which he signed a
contract in 1498 and which he completed by July 1500. 

He had his own house, which included ample work space, and a trusted
assistant, Piero d'Argenta, she said. He also had access to Greek marble,
found in excavations around Rome. 

That the "Laocoön" is made of seven pieces of marble may suggest that
Michelangelo needed to transport the finished work unnoticed to its point of
discovery, where it could have been assembled and joined on the spot, Dr.
Catterson added.

William E. Wallace, a professor of art history at Washington University in
St. Louis and the author of several books on Michelangelo, was not as quick
as other art historians to dismiss Dr. Catterson's claims.

"Until I read the full argument in a reputable academic publication, I'm
going to reserve a final judgment," he said, noting that since 1996, 17
discoveries of or attributions to Michelangelo have made national news - and
then been discredited or forgotten. "My first reaction was: 'Oh, come on.
Not another.' However, the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I
became. I think this one has the greatest lasting power."

For Dr. Catterson everything was just a little too perfect about the
discovery of the "Laocoön," which was in fairly good shape after presumably
some 1,500 years when it was found by a farmer more or less where Pliny had
predicted. 

"It's almost as though it was discovered to order," she said.

But to Leo Steinberg, a prominent Michelangelo scholar, the evidence simply
does not add up - neither the time nor the bank receipts nor the
secretiveness. "We know that at least a dozen different people would have
been involved in the process," he said. "And we know that Michelangelo made
many enemies who would have been delighted to accuse him of a forgery of
that scale. All of this strains credulity that in an Italian community at
that time in the 1490's, there was no gossip, no squealing."

Professor Wallace agreed that hard proof was lacking but said he was willing
to consider Dr. Catterson's argument. "We'll never have the certitude a
scientist gets," he said. "It can only be tested by the weight of scholarly
opinion and time. 

"But Lynn is an excellent scholar and well trained. And the intriguing thing
is that nobody who studies classical art in a way wants the 'Laocoön.' They
find it kind of a Hellenistic embarrassment, maybe because it really doesn't
look like anything else comparable in the history of classical art."

"And besides," he added, "we can never prove that Shakespeare really wrote
'Hamlet' at this point. They're still arguing about it."

Photo:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/arts/design/18laoc.html