A 1506 discovery in Rome set off a century-long argument over how to restore the Laocoön

historyThe Public Domain Review1506 · Rome

A 1506 discovery in Rome set off a century-long argument over how to restore the Laocoön

the gist

In 1506 a sculpture of the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons was dug up in Rome, missing parts, including an arm. Pope Julius II bought it and placed it in the Belvedere Courtyard, and the restoration was left to a contest between leading artists. Michelangelo argued that the right arm should be bent backward in anguish, but Raphael, who judged the contest, chose Jacopo Sansovino's version with an upward arm. That restoration was carried out between 1520 and 1540 and became the accepted image. The missing arm was not found until 1906, and it was confirmed as belonging to the statue in 1942, vindicating Michelangelo's version. Meanwhile the German engraver Hans Brosamer, who never visited Rome, made a 1538 print that reimagined the sculpture with the arm bent back, challenging the official image.

so what

The dispute shows how a famous artwork's meaning can be contested through copies and prints, not just the original object. It also shows how a restoration can become the accepted truth for centuries.

fun fact

The Laocoön was discovered in the vineyard of Felice de' Freddi, on the Esquiline Hill in Rome.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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