Painter, engraver and editor, Pieter Claez Soutman was born and died in Haarlem in the Netherlands. He was a student, and later assistant of Rubens, engraving the master’s works.
Here, Soutman has drawn inspiration from Ancient History and more precisely Virgil’s Aeneid. According to the Latin poet, the Trojan priest Laocoon refused to allow Ulysses and his Trojan horse into his town, rightly suspecting a trap set by his Greek enemies. But the Gods wanted Troy destroyed. And so, two monstrous serpents came out of the sea to kill Laocoon and his two sons, suffocating them and devouring their poor limbs.
Soutman expresses the physical agony of the three men, inspired by a Hellenistic sculpted group he saw in Rome in 1506. He equally uses the same tortured expressions and bodies twisting in frenzied movement found in the ancient work. The colours in this dramatic coastal landscape accentuate the tragedy of the scene: Soutman opposes the glistening black scales of the deadly reptiles with the athletic bodies of the vanquished Trojan men.