Ugolino and His Sons

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux French

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 548

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.

#90. Body Language: Curator, Theater Director, and Educator: Ugolino and His Sons

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Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris

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Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris
Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris
Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris
Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris
Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris
Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris
Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie), Saint-Béat marble, French, Paris

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