| Ugolino and His Sons | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux |
 3D model (click to interact) | |
Ugolino and His Sons is a marble sculpture of Ugolino made by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux in Paris during the 1860s. It depicts the story of Ugolino from Dante's Inferno in which the 13th century count is imprisoned and starving with his children. The work, known for its expressive detail, launched Carpeaux's career. [1]
The work is a highly expressive depiction of Ugolino della Gherardesca from Canto XXXIII of Dante's Inferno . In the story, the Pisan count Ugolino is sentenced to die in a tower prison with his children and grandchildren. Carpeaux shows Ugolino at the moment where he considers cannibalism. The work is emblematic of the Romantic style's heightened physical and emotional states. [1] Ugolino looks into the distance. His posture ignores the four children that cling to his body as if he were unaware they were there—the youngest is curled at his feet and possibly dead. In the source text, Ugolino grieves the agonizing death of his children and whether he eats his children's flesh is unclear to the reader, as it is in the sculpture. [2] Ugolino's body is muscular even though he is starving. Its style reflects the Vatican's Laocoön and His Sons . [2]
Carpeaux won the Prix de Rome in 1854. [3] While in Rome, he stayed in the French Academy in Rome's Villa Medici and studied the works of Michelangelo. [1] [3] Carpeaux's Ugolino was prototyped on Michelangelo's works from three centuries prior, [1] particularly his Last Judgment panel of the Sistine Chapel. [4] The children's anatomy was based on naturalistic observation. He sketched dying children as part of his preparation. He was compositionally influenced by Laocoön and His Sons at the Vatican. Carpeaux completed the work in the last year of his residence at the French Academy in Rome. [1]
The sculpture was cast in bronze in 1863 by the French Ministry of Fine Arts and displayed in the Parisian Tuileries to accompany a replica of Laocoön. A marble version was completed in Paris under Carpeaux's supervision for the owner of the Saint-Béat marble quarry to exhibit at the 1867 International Exposition. This version was later acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. [1]
The initial release of the plaster model created a "public sensation". Ugolino and His Sons departed from the French Academy's tradition with "boldness and vigor" and the "spirit and masterly technique worthy of Michelangelo". [1] The sculpture, and Carpeaux, were considered descendants of the 1830s French Romantic sculptor tradition associated with François Rude and Auguste Préault. Carpeaux admired the works of Rude, who once served as his mentor. Ugolino and His Sons launched Carpeaux's career and led to his commission for the façade of the Palais Garnier opera house: La Danse , [1] [5] a work that made him famous. [3]
Surrealist artist Max Ernst used a woodcut of Ugolino, presumably from the International Exposition's catalog, in his 1929 graphic novel La femme 100 têtes. His collage preserves the terror of Ugolino's face, but juxtaposes it against musical instruments. [6]
Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it. Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.
The Madonna della Pietà, informally known as La Pietà, is a marble sculpture of Jesus and Mary at Mount Golgotha representing the "Sixth Sorrow" of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Michelangelo Buonarroti, now in Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. It is a key work of Italian Renaissance sculpture and often taken as the start of the High Renaissance.
Baccio Bandinelli, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, draughtsman, and painter.
The Vatican Museums are the public museums of Vatican City, enclave of Rome. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most well-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
The Pietà is a subject in Christian art depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary cradling the mortal body of Jesus Christ after his Descent from the Cross. It is most often found in sculpture. The Pietà is a specific form of the Lamentation of Christ in which Jesus is mourned by sole privilege of the Virgin Mary alone, while representing her "sixth sorrow" and sometimes accompanied by a specific Marian title.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a French sculptor and painter during the Second Empire under Napoleon III.
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group, has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and put on public display in the Vatican Museums, where it remains today. The statue is very likely the same one that was praised in the highest terms by Pliny the Elder, the main Roman writer on art. The figures in the statue are nearly life-sized, with the entire group measuring just over 2 m in height. The sculpture depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents.
Hiram Powers was an American neoclassical sculptor. He was one of the first 19th-century American artists to gain an international reputation, largely based on his famous marble sculpture The Greek Slave.
Ugolino della Gherardesca, Count of Donoratico, was an Italian nobleman, politician and naval commander. He was frequently accused of treason and features prominently in Dante's Divine Comedy.
Louis-Ernest Barrias was a French sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school. In 1865 Barrias won the Prix de Rome for study at the French Academy in Rome.
Edmé Bouchardon was a French sculptor best known for his neoclassical statues in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, his medals, his equestrian statue of Louis XV of France for the Place de la Concorde ; and for the Fountain of Four Seasons in Paris. He was also a draftsman and painter, and made celebrated series of engravings of working-class Parisians.
The Gates of Hell is a monumental bronze sculptural group work by French artist Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from the Inferno, the first section of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It stands at 6 metres high, 4 metres wide and 1 metre deep (19.7×13.1×3.3 ft) and contains 180 figures.
Classical sculpture refers generally to sculpture from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, as well as the Hellenized and Romanized civilizations under their rule or influence, from about 500 BC to around 200 AD. It may also refer more precisely a period within Ancient Greek sculpture from around 500 BC to the onset of the Hellenistic style around 323 BC, in this case usually given a capital "C". The term "classical" is also widely used for a stylistic tendency in later sculpture, not restricted to works in a Neoclassical or classical style.
Neo-Attic or Atticizing is a sculptural style, beginning in Hellenistic sculpture and vase-painting of the 2nd century BC and climaxing in Roman art of the 2nd century AD, copying, adapting or closely following the style shown in reliefs and statues of the Classical and Archaic periods. It was first produced by a number of Neo-Attic workshops at Athens, which began to specialize in it, producing works for purchase by Roman connoisseurs, and was taken up in Rome, probably by Greek artisans.
The Belvedere Torso is a 1.59 m (5.2 ft) tall fragmentary marble statue of a male nude, known to be in Rome from the 1430s, and signed prominently on the front of the base by "Apollonios, son of Nestor, Athenian", who is unmentioned in ancient literature. It is now in the Museo Pio-Clementino of the Vatican Museums.
The Taddei Tondo or The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John is an unfinished marble relief tondo of the Madonna and Child and the infant Saint John the Baptist, by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. It is in the permanent collection of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The tondo is the only marble sculpture by Michelangelo in Great Britain. A "perfect demonstration" of his carving technique, the work delivers a "powerful emotional and narrative punch".
Ludwig Pollak was an Austro-Czech classical archaeologist, antiquities dealer, and director of the Museo Barracco di Scultura Antica in Rome.
Ugolino and his sons is a plaster sculpture by French artist Auguste Rodin, part of the sculptural group known as The Gates of Hell. As an independent piece, it was exhibited by its author in Brussels (1887), Edinburgh (1893), Genoa (1896), Florence (1897), Netherlands (1899) and in his own retrospective in 1900.
Why Born Enslaved? or Why Born a Slave? is a life-sized bust by the French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux depicting a bound woman of African descent. Carpeaux executed versions of the sculpture in plaster, marble, terracotta, and bronze. It is represented in a number of museums, including the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Media related to Ugolino and His Sons by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux at Wikimedia Commons
