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Audio Stop 412

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Close to us, six people, all nude with light skin, stand or lie intertwined with snakes on a bank of rocks in this horizonal painting. Beyond them, the deep, distant landscape has a brown horse, tiny in scale, headed for a city of stone buildings beneath a vivid blue sky filled with twisting white clouds. The people’s bodies are sinewy and elongated, and their skin is painted in tones of ivory white, warmed with peach highlights and streaked with deep gray shadows. At the center, a man with a white beard and white, curly hair lies back on the charcoal-gray rock with his knees bent and his shins splayed out. With his body angled away from us to our right, he holds the body of a long, silvery-gray snake in his left fist, on our right, down by his hip. The snake curves behind the man’s body and he grips the snake behind its head. The man has high cheekbones and sunken cheeks, and rolls his eyes up and back to look at the snake, whose wide-open mouth nearly touches his hair. To our left, a cleanshaven young man stands with his body facing us but he arches back, holding an arcing snake in his hands. The young man’s right hand, on our left, bends at the elbow so he can grasp the snake’s tail and his other arm stretches straight back, holding the snake’s body as it curls around so its fangs nearly reach the young man’s side. To our right, next to the older man, a second, dark-haired young man lies on the rocks with his head toward us. His feet are on the ground, so we look onto the tops of his thighs. He lies with one hand resting on the ground, overhead. Three people seem to float, feet dangling, alongside the right edge of the painting. The person closest to us looks onto the writhing people in profile, back to us. A second person just beyond also looks to our left. A third head turns the opposite direction and looks off to our right. In the distance, the golden-brown horse is angled away from us, one front leg raised, on a path that moves from behind the rocky outcropping to the far-off town. Nestled in a shallow valley, buildings in the town are mostly painted with rose pink and red walls and smoke-gray roofs. The land dips to a deeper, green valley to our right, lining the horizon that comes two-thirds of the way up the composition. The standing people are outlined against the sapphire-blue sky and knotted, gray and white clouds.

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)

Laocoön, c. 1610/1614

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 28

Read full audio transcript

Laocoön, by El Greco, painted around 1610 to 14. Oil on canvas. The painted surface is about 4 and a half feet high by 5 and a half feet wide.

This description is just under 3 minutes long.

Three people are attacked by serpents in front of a hillside town, while three more people look on from our right. The trio being attacked occupy most of the composition.  All the people are close to us, arranged across a dark, rocky ground.  

The scene is loosely painted with lively, textured brushwork. The people’s bodies are sinuous and elongated, as they writhe across the scene. Their skin is sickly pale, painted with long streaks of gray and white.  

Let’s focus first on the three main characters. Then we’ll turn to those standing to the right. And we’ll finish by describing the background.

At the center of the composition, an older man with white hair and beard is sprawled on his back with his legs angled down towards the left. He struggles to fend off the snake whose rope-like form is twined around his body. The snake’s open jaws snap at his face; his right hand grasps its neck.

Immediately to our right of the older man is the lifeless body of a young man. He lies with his head towards us and his raised knees pointing away.

At the far left, a third man stands facing us. He twists with his arms overhead as he grapples with another snake. The reptile’s body curves in an arc to the right, its head snapping at the man’s waist. The man throws his head back and strains both arms to grip the snake’s body.   

Moving now to the far right of the painting, three people stand one in front of the other; two of them are turned to our left to watch the action. One of them, in the middle of the group, looks away, to our right. These characters are even more loosely painted than those with the snakes. The person in front has his back towards us. The other two people stand beyond him, their bodies overlapping.

A hilly townscape extends into the deep distance. Houses are painted loosely in rust red and gray against the grass green hillside. Just to the left of center, a light brown horse approaches the gate of the town.

Above, a deep turquoise sky is piled with gray and white clouds.  

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