Agesander of Rhodes

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.

The name Agesander is only found in ancient literature in Pliny the Elder,[2] but occurs in several inscriptions, though between them these certainly refer to a number of different individuals.

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",[3] or working in a Pergamese baroque style created some two centuries earlier.

The scenes all feature stories of Odysseus,[3] 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).

The 18th-century art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann felt certain that, as sculptor of the Laocoön group, he was a contemporary of Lysippos in the 4th century BC;[9] others have placed him as late as the 70s AD, in the reign of Vespasian.

[10] Rice makes the confident and convenient but perhaps unwarranted assumption that only one Athenodoros, the son of Agesander, practiced as a sculptor,[11] and that he signed the Lindos statue in 42 BC, a prestigious commission not likely to be given to a young artist.