Caricature of the Laocoön represented as a Monkey in a Landscape

Nicoló Boldrini

active 1530–1570

Titian

1485 or 1490–1576

Caricature of the Laocoön represented as a Monkey in a Landscape, 1500s

Where object was made: Italy

Material/technique: woodcut

Dimensions:
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 269 x 399 mm
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 10 9/16 x 15 11/16 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 20 x 25 in

Credit line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Dale Thompson

Accession number: 1960.0074

Not on display

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Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body

In 1545, Venetian artist Titian satirized a Hellenistic sculpture of Laocoön, a character from Greco-Roman myth, by showing Laocoön not as an idealized, muscular human but rather as a monkey. Titian’s odd drawing, transformed into a woodcut by Boldrini, has been interpreted as a subversive critique of the dominant understanding of the human body at the time, which was based solely on the dissection of monkeys and apes but that had nonetheless dominated Western thinking about human anatomy since the time of Galen, a second-century Greek physician, writer, and philosopher. In the mid 1500s, Andreas Vesalius began widely criticizing Galen’s ideas based on his direct observation of human anatomy through comparative dissections (his work can be viewed in the case behind you).

Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body

Brosseau Center for Learning: Principles of Organismal Biology Fall 2019

This print parodying the famous ancient Greek sculpture Laocoön and His Sons may explore a Renaissance-era controversy between Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) and his contemporary anatomists. Scholars who followed the ancient Greek physician Galen's observations based their understanding of human anatomy on books with human anatomical concepts derived from animal dissection (specifically of pigs, monkeys, and Barbary macaques). Vesalius, by contrast, believed in direct observation and performed human dissection as part of his research practice.