Parade Shield with Laocoön and His Sons
Unknown · c. 1560-1570
No one ever fought behind this shield. Its steel face is embossed with the punishment of Laocoön, the Trojan priest who warned against the wooden horse and was strangled with his two sons by serpents sent out of the sea; a city rises in the distance behind them. Around the central scene runs a border of medallions and trophies in which modern and antique weapons are jumbled together with musical instruments. The figures in the medallions can be more or less identified as Cleopatra, Diana, Samson and Hercules. Gold and silver damascening picks out the details, and remnants of the red velvet lining with its gilt fringe survive on the back.
Round parade shields of this kind were made in Milan around fifteen sixty to seventy for princes who wanted to be seen as heirs of ancient Rome. The subject itself pays homage to the Laocoön group discovered in Rome in fifteen hundred and six. The shield may have belonged to Marshal Augereau; the museum bought it in eighteen forty-six from his widow, the Comtesse de Sainte-Aldegonde, for eight thousand francs. It spent years at the imperial armoury of Pierrefonds and returned to the Louvre in eighteen seventy-five.
Did You Know? The shield was bought for 8,000 francs in 1846 from the widow of one of Napoleon's marshals.
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