Rickee Divine, my daughter, my only child, my love, my soul, my heart, everything in the world was about you. We miss you so much,.you're our little rockstar angel in heaven! best thing we ever did 6-97 April 13 2021💋
This masterpiece was lost for centuries.
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Back in 1506, some workers were digging in a vineyard on Rome's Esquiline Hill when they found something incredible: a massive marble statue buried right beneath their feet.
It was Laocoön and His Sons.
The guy who was called in to see it knew exactly what he was looking at right away.
It was the exact statue Pliny the Elder had written about 1,400 years before, the one he called the greatest work of art in the world.
If you don't know the story, Laocoön was a Trojan priest who tried to warn his people about the Trojan Horse.
The gods weren't too happy about that, especially Athena, who was backing the Greeks. She sent two giant sea serpents to take him out.
The snakes wrapped around him and his two young sons, and the marble captures that exact, awful moment. You can see the father trying to break free, his face showing not just his own pain, but the terrifying realization that he can't save his kids either.
When Pope Julius II heard about the discovery, he sent Michelangelo, then about 30, to look at it.
The group was damaged, but the writhing bodies and the agony stuck with him. That strain, and that sense of a body pushed past its limit, shows up again and again in what he made after.
The haunting sound that Roman soldiers would have heard from their Celtic enemies before battle came from the Carnyx, an ancient wind instrument used between 200 BC and 200 AD.