As the Domus Aurea with its new antique source material was explored, one classical Greek sculpture was unearthed on a day that Michelangelo visited. It was the Laocoon, a marble work by famed Greek Hellenistic sculptors, Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes. Laocoon, a mythological subject, depicts the Trojan priest Laocoon with his two sons in a struggle against a giant sea snake, a punishment from the gods for warning the Trojans about the Trojan horse. Its powerful emotional content and vigorous muscularity would soon be reflected in the works of Italian Renaissance giants Michelangelo and Raphael.

This work and others like it from Nero's private collection of classical Greek sculpture profoundly influenced Italian Renaissance art, and it is from this art that we have developed our own modern aesthetic sensibilities. Had Nero not been the demented, despotic monster that he was, had his Golden House not been stripped and entombed, buried beneath the Baths of Trajan for two millennia, his classical Greek sculpture collection might have been lost like so many other art work of its kind. Without Nero, we might not appreciate beauty when we see it.

Brenda Harness, Art Historian

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Brenda Harness is a practicing artist, art historian, and former university teacher writing about a variety of topics pertaining to art and art history. Visit her at Fine Art Touch.

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