Hall of Troy, North Wall: "Laocoön and his Sons Strangled by Serpents”

This dramatic scene, clearly inspired by the model of the Vatican Laocoön, shows the episode of the death of the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons killed by two serpents that rose from the sea by divine will. The episode is narrated in the second book of the Aeneid, in which it is specified that Laocoön was intent on sacrificing a large bull to Neptune (the animal and the statue of the god appear in the painting), when two large serpents rose from the waters and they pounced on his children and then on him, crushing them. In the panel on the left, above the door leading to the Chamber of Heads, Vulcan appears in the act of forging Achilles' weapons: he is assisted by the hero's mother, the nereid Thetis (Iliad, book XVIII). The episode is determined by the loss of the hero's weapons worn by Patroclus, whose death is represented on the east vault of the vault. The particular appearance of Achilles' shield, characterized by three concentric bands around a terrestrial representation, one of which includes the zodiac constellations, demonstrates the derivation of the image from the commentary on the Iliad by Eustathius of Thessalonica. The execution of these two frescoes, designed by Giulio Romano, is attributed to Rinaldo Mantovano.