![\"Laocoon\"](\"https:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/laocoon.jpg\")
<\/a> Laoco\u00f6n was the priest of Troy who had guessed at the trick of the wooden horse by which the Greeks were about to take over the city. But before he was able to warn his fellow citizens, two serpents sent by the enemy gods killed him and his two sons. <\/p>\nFrom his sacrifice, then, stemmed the fall of Troy and the flight of Aeneas toward the coasts of Italy, where his descendents founded Rome: it is the saga that Virgil celebrates in the Aeneid. <\/p>\n
As the founder of the new Christian Rome, pope Julius II therefore viewed the discovery of Laoco\u00f6n as \u201cprovidential.\u201d He placed the statue in the Belvedere courtyard, on the highest part of the Vatican hill, in the new architectural complex designed by Bramante after the model of the Roman temple of Primeval Fortune in Palestrina. And he soon placed beside Laoco\u00f6n other ancient masterpieces in his possession, including the Belvedere Apollo. <\/p>\n
The statues had an extraordinary impact on the artists Julius II called to work in the Vatican \u2013 and also on many artists during the following centuries. <\/p>\n
The prophet Jonah, who dominates the vault of the Sistine Chapel frescoed by Michelangelo, has his model in Laoco\u00f6n. <\/p>\n
And the Christ in the Universal Judgment also painted by Michelangelo has the body of Laoco\u00f6n and the face of the Belvedere Apollo. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not just a matter of similarities of form. The classical art that breaks forth in Renaissance art reflects a vision of the Church that reconciles the people of God and the pagans, that places side by side the prophets of the Old Testament and the sibyls, that shows the great ancient thinkers walking toward the City of God. The \u201cSchool of Athens\u201d frescoed by Raphael in the Stanze Vaticane not only gathers the philosophers beneath the vaults of the new St. Peter\u2019s Basilica under construction, but it places them before the \u201cDisputation on the Sacrament\u201d; even more, it seems to show them moving toward the altar with the consecrated host, the Trinity, and the earthly and heavenly Church. <\/p>\n
The pagan Laoco\u00f6n is an essential part of this vision of the Church. <\/p>\n
Which is the same as that of Benedict XVI. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…because I’m still obsessed: Interested in that newly-on-display necropolis at the Vatican (the one near the Vatican museum entrance)? This traveler has excellent photos from a recent visit. Interested in the Christmas tree made of entirely of Murano glass that’s on display in Venice? Here you go And don’t forget the Laoco\u00f6n, cleaned up, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
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This traveler has excellent photos from a recent visit. Interested in the Christmas tree made of entirely of Murano glass that’s on display in Venice? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/img521.imageshack.us\/img521\/3612\/alberonatalecampanilethqr2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n