Apr 24, 2017
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and his Sons, 1865–67, after a composition modeled in Rome c1860–61
“The story of the Pisan traitor Ugolino della Gherardesca, imprisoned with his sons and condemned to starvation, was told in Dante’s Inferno (canto 33). Carpeaux shows the anguished father resisting his children’s offer of their own bodies for his sustenance. The composition was cast in Bronze (1862-63, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). The owner of the Saint-Béat quarry commissioned this marble.”
