page_title: Agesander of Rhodes
section_title: Sculptures
hierarchical_section_title: Agesander of Rhodes / Sculptures
caption_attribution_description: The "Scylla group" (cast reconstruction) at Sperlonga
context_page_description: Agesander was one, or more likely, several Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes, working in the first centuries BC and AD, in a late Hellenistic "baroque" style. If there was more than one sculptor called Agesander they were very likely related to each other. The very important works of the groups of Laocoön and his Sons, in the Vatican Museums, and the sculptures discovered at Sperlonga are both signed by three sculptors including an Agesander.
context_section_description: The name Agesander is only found in ancient literature in Pliny the Elder, but occurs in several inscriptions, though between them these certainly refer to a number of different individuals.  Until the discovery at Sperlonga in 1959, only one work which Agesander executed was known, although this is one of the most famous of all classical sculptures.  Pliny records that in conjunction with Athenodorus and Polydorus, Agesander sculpted Laocoön and his Sons, although modern art historians generally view the trio as being either "high-class copyists", or working in a Pergamese baroque style created some two centuries earlier.
  In 1959 a very large set of sculptures were discovered at Sperlonga, and are now in a museum there created for them.  One section, the ship's prow of the "Scylla group", was signed by the same three names, this time with the names of their fathers, but in a different order.  Sperlonga is the classical Spelunca mentioned by Tacitus and others, on the coast between Rome and Naples, where the emperor Tiberius had a celebrated villa. Tiberius was nearly killed when the grotto containing the statues collapsed in 26 AD, as Tacitus recounts, so they must predate this.  The sculptures were in thousands of fragments, and reconstruction of the smaller pieces continues, amid much scholarly argument.  The scenes all feature stories of Odysseus, and are in a similar style to the Laocoön, but with many significant differences, not least in quality, being uneven but generally of much lower skill and finish (the group is also considerably larger).  Both the Sperlonga works and the Laocoön were probably created in Italy for very wealthy Roman patrons very likely from the Imperial circle; they were certainly owned by the Imperial family later, as Pliny says the Laocoön belonged to the Emperor Titus in his day.
caption: The "Scylla group" of the Sperlonga sculptures.  The signatures are carved on the ship's prow.
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