Laocoon

The group is an important example of the production of sculptures, which was a feature of the Tuscan manufactory from its first year.
Besides the creation of new and original models, Carlo Ginori had indeed the precise policy of using porcelain, then a new material, to produce a gallery of copies of famous statues of antiquity, reflecting a taste still lively in eighteenth-century Tuscany.
Here the subject is the Laocoon, the famous Hellenistic group, found on the Esquiline hill in 1506, which became one of first antique statues in the Vatican collections.
The paste used in this group is the so called masso bastardo, in which thick white pigment covers a paste, grey and hybrid, made from less pure clays.