Last Friday, workers from Atelier Art Services and Storage gathered in PAFA’s historic Cast Hall to disassemble, package, and transport Laocoӧn and His Sons, one of the school’s most famous casts. The Laocoӧn, beloved by PAFA students who frequently sketch, draw, and paint the incredible musculature of the full-scale cast’s figures, depicts Laocoӧn, a priest during the Trojan War, wrestling with an enormous sea serpent that has attacked his family after he warned the Trojans to demolish the Greeks' colossal wooden horse. “I fear the Greeks, Laocoӧn allegedly admonished, "even those bearing gifts!”  

The cast itself has been a centerpiece of PAFA's vital cast drawing tradition since the museum's inception.  According to former PAFA archivist Cheryl Leibold, in 1805, PAFA founder Charles Willson Peale asked Nicholas Biddle, who was the secretary to the American ambassador in France and brother of PAFA founder William Biddle, to send casts from Paris, which were made by the official cast maker of the Louvre Museum. Included in that cast collection was the Laocoӧn. Athough the vast majority of PAFA's early casts burned in a building fire in 1845, PAFA quickly replenished its extensive collection, acquiring more copies of world-renowned sculptures.

Since the Historic Landmark Building opened in 1876, the casts have had a dedicated home for students to study them in the Cast Hall, setting PAFA apart from most other art schools. The Cast Hall is only open to the public on the first Wednesday of each month, during Art in Process. 

Although the cast shows Laocoӧn and his sons writhing in a struggle to disentangle themselves from the serpent, the Atelier crew had no trouble extricating each piece as they took apart the cast. Workers carefully wrapped and labeled each piece, preparing the Laocoӧn to be shipped to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it will be featured in the upcoming exhibition The Wrath of the Gods: Masterpieces by Rubens, Michelangelo, and Titian, opening September 12.

Brian Boutwell, PAFA’s School Exhibition Coordinator, said, “The exhibition demonstrates how the excavation of the ancient sculpture group from a Roman field in 1506 inspired master artists to not only copy and study the form of the object, but also to express aspects of the human condition.”

Boutwell eagerly oversaw the entire process of loaning the Laocoӧn, from finding a ladder tall enough for Atelier workers to remove Laocoӧn’s head to riding along with the cast down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. He also underscored how much students will miss the Laocoӧn this semester. Yet while students have already started asking about the missing Laocoӧn cast, unlike Laocoӧn himself, they should have no fear. 

The Philadelphia Museum of Art staff will no doubt be far more cautious in opening this delivery’s precious contents than the Trojans were with the wooden horse, and the cast will return to PAFA after The Wrath of the Gods closes in December. In addition, on October 21, Dr. Christopher D.M. Atkins, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900, will be at PAFA to discuss Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, and the Laocoӧn at Art at Lunch. 

Watch a time-lapse video of the Laocoӧn on the move.

Written by ZP Heller

August 24, 2015

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