Uffizi: Laocoon and his Sons

A sculpture that inspired Michelangelo himself shows a man and his two sons being strangled, crushed and bitten to death by two monstrous snakes. This statue, created out of a single piece of marble, is said to have been sculpted in Ancient Greece. It was described by Pliny the Elder as “a work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced.” In other words, according to Pliny, this was the greatest work of art produced in the Classical period.