Ugolino and His Sons

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

1865–67 · Saint-Béat marble · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

The subject of this intensely Romantic work is derived from canto XXXIII of Dante's Inferno, which describes how the Pisan traitor Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, his sons, and his grandsons were imprisoned in 1288 and died of starvation. Carpeaux's visionary statue, executed in 1865–67, reflects the artist's passionate reverence for Michelangelo, specifically for The Last Judgment (1536–41) in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, Rome, as well as his own painstaking concern with anatomical realism.

Artist

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

Date

1865–67

Medium

Saint-Béat marble

Culture

French, Paris

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Purchase, Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation Inc. Gift, Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay Foundation Inc. Gift, and Fletcher Fund, 1967