Laocoon

An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Ellen Frothingham

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780486443874
• eBook ISBN: 9780486170381
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

According to Greek mythology, Laocoon was a Trojan priest who, along with his two sons, offended the gods. As punishment, the three were strangled by sea serpents. The discovery in 1506 of an ancient Greek sculpture showing the three figures in their death agony not only gave rise to renewed interest in the classical period but also created repercussions in the art world. It was this work of art that German dramatist and critic Gotthold Lessing used as a point of reference for his essay Laocoon. Originally published in 1766, Lessing's inspired meditation on the distinguishing characteristics of painting and poetry became a turning point in the study of Western art. His essay on the origins, forms, and influences of these art forms aided in framing modern conceptions of the artistic medium and helped establish modernist views of the uniqueness of the individual arts.
A breakthrough vision in aesthetics, Laocoon is essential reading for anyone interested in poetry, art history, and the fine arts.

NOTES TO THE LAOCOON.

NOTE 1, p. 8.

ANTIOCHUS (Anthol. lib. ii. cap. 4). Hardouin, in his commentary on Pliny (lib. xxxv. sect. 36), attributes this epigram to a certain Piso. But among all the Greek epigrammatists there is none of this name.

NOTE 2, p. 9.

FOR this reason Aristotle commanded that his pictures should not be shown to young persons, in order that their imagination might be kept as free as possible from all disagreeable images. (Polit. lib. viii. cap. 5, p. 526, edit. Conring.) Boden, indeed, would read Pausanias in this passage instead of Pauson, because that artist is known to have painted lewd figures (de Umbra poetica comment. 1, p. xiii). As if we needed a philosophic law-giver to teach us the necessity of keeping from youth such incentives to wantonness! A comparison of this with the well-known passage in the “Art of Poesy” would have led him to withhold his conjecture. There are commentators, as Kühn on Ælian (Var. Hist. lib. iv. cap. 3), who suppose the difference mentioned by Aristotle as existing between Polygnotus, Dionysius, and Pauson to consist in this : that Polygnotus painted gods and heroes; Dionysius, men; and Pauson, animals. They all painted human figures; and the fact that Pauson once painted a horse, does not prove him to have been a painter of animals as Boden supposes him to have been. Their rank was determined by the degree of beauty they gave their human figures ; and the reason that Dionysius could paint nothing but men, and was therefore called pre-eminently the anthropographist, was that he copied too slavishly, and could not rise into the domain of the ideal beneath which it would have been blasphemy to represent gods and heroes.

NOTE 3, p. II.

THE serpent has been erroneously regarded as the peculiar symbol of a god of medicine. But Justin Martyr expressly says (Apolog. ii. p. 55, edit. Sylburgh), παρ

παντ

τ

ν νομιζοµ

νων παρ’

μ

ν ϑε

ν,

ις σ

μβολον μ

γα κα

μυστ

ριον

ναγ

εται ; and a number of monuments might be mentioned where the serpent accompanies deities having no connection with health.

NOTE 4, p. 12.

LOOK through all the works of art mentioned by Pliny, Pausanias, and the rest, examine all the remaining statues, bas-reliefs, and pictures of the ancients, and nowhere will you find a fury. I except figures that are rather symbolical than belonging to art, such as those generally represented on coins. Yet Spence, since he insisted on having furies, would have done better to borrow them from coins than introduce them by an ingenious conceit into a work where they certainly do not exist. (Seguini Numis. p. 178. Spanheim. de Præst. Numism. Dissert. xiii. p. 639. Les Césars de Julien, par Spanheim, p. 48. In his Polymetis he says (dial. xvi.) : “Though furies are very uncommon in the works of the ancient artists, yet there is one subject in which they are generally introduced by them. I mean the death of Meleager, in the relievos of which they are often represented as encouraging or urging Althæa to burn the fatal brand on which the life of her only son depended. Even a woman’s resentment, you see, could not go so far without a little help from the devil. In a copy of one of these relievos, published in the ‘Admiranda,’ there are two women standing by the altar with Althæa, who are probably meant for furies in the original, (for who but furies would assist at such a sacrifice?) though the copy scarce represents them horrid enough for that character. But what is most to be observed in that piece is the round disc beneath the centre of it, with the evident head of a fury upon it. This might be what Althæa addressed her prayers to whenever she wished ill to her neighbors, or whenever she was going to do any very evil action. Ovid introduces her as invoking the furies on this occasion in particular, and makes her give more than one reason for her doing so.” (Metamorph. viii. 479.)

In this way we might make every thing out of any thing. “Who but furies,” asks Spence, “would have a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
• PREFACE.
• I.
• II.
• III.
• IV.
• V.
• VI.
• VII.
• VIII.
• IX.
• X.
• XI.
• XII.
• XIII.
• XIV.
• XV.
• XVI.
• XVII.
• XVIII.
• XIX.
• XX.
• XXI.
• XXII.
• XXIII.
• XXIV.
• XXV.
• XXVI.
• XXVII.
• XXVIII.
• XXIX.
• NOTES TO THE LAOCOON.
• INDEX.
• DOVER BOOKS