On 14 January 1506, the ancient marble group now known as Laocoon and His Sons was excavated in a vineyard near Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Pope Julius II sent Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo to inspect it, and the sculpture was quickly identified with the celebrated work described by Pliny the Elder. Its purchase and display in the Vatican made the find a founding object of the papal antiquities collection and a touchstone for Renaissance debates about classical expression, anatomy, restoration, and artistic authority. The Vatican Museums still present the group as one of the roots of their public collection, while later writers have treated its agonized bodies as a key model for the emotional force of Western sculpture.
The discovery helped make ancient sculpture a central standard for Renaissance and later European art.