Laocoön

El Greco painted Laocoon around 1610-14, his only surviving treatment of a classical mythological subject. The painting depicts the Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons being attacked by serpents sent by the gods, a subject made famous by the ancient sculpture discovered in Rome in 1506. Uniquely, El Greco sets the scene before the city of Toledo rather than Troy, conflating classical myth with his adopted Spanish city in a deeply personal artistic statement.

The elongated, twisting figures reflect El Greco's late style at its most extreme, with the struggling bodies creating a rhythmic pattern of flesh and serpent against a brooding, storm-lit landscape. The spectral palette of grays, greens, and flesh tones creates an atmosphere of supernatural doom.