The Laocoön sculpture simultaneously achieves the greatest beauty, as evidenced by the wise composition of the battle between pain and resistance in the brow.

Laocoön is a being in the greatest pain, fashioned in the likeness of a man seeking to gather the conscious strength of his mind and spirit against it…. Beneath the brow, the battle between pain and resistance, as if concentrated in this one place, is composed with great wisdom…Thus, where the greatest pain is expressed, the greatest beauty is also to be found. (History, pp. 313–14)