Laocoön and His Sons is a marble sculpture group in the Vatican Museums. Pliny the Elder attributed it to three sculptors from Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. Scholars suggest dates from 200 BC to the 70s AD, and a Julio-Claudian date is now preferred. Some debate whether it is an original or a copy of an earlier bronze.
Workers unearthed it in February 1506 in the vineyard of Felice De Fredis on the Oppian Hill in Rome. Pope Julius II acquired it on March 23, 1506, and showed it in a niche in the Belvedere Garden that August. It is just over 6 feet 7 inches (2 meters) tall, in fine white marble, and is called a fine example of Hellenistic baroque.
Restorers added missing arms over the centuries. A bent arm found in 1905 was added in 1957, and in the 1980s the group was taken apart and reassembled. It now stands in the Museo Pio-Clementino.
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