A Study of Sculpture Ugolino and His sons by Jean Baptiste Carpeaux

Abstract

This article aims to study the neoclassical sculpture “Ugolino and His sons” by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux by researching the story and style of creation. Carpeaux was a French artist who worked between the Neoclassical and Romantic periods. The Classical Greco-Roman period influences his art. He began by working in a neoclassical style. After he attended the Villa Medici, his expression of emotions and feelings became more apparent.

Carpeaux 's sculpture "Ugolino and His sons" refers to Dante's Inferno which is the first part of “the Divine Comedy”. It is the story of an Italian nobleman Ugolino or Ugolino della Gherardesca who became obsessed with power and was condemned to die of starvation while being imprisoned in a tower with his sons. The sculpture “Ugolino and His sons” expresses emotions and feelings through facial expressions and angles of bodies and gestures. The artist perfectly used composition to arrange the subject in a way to guide the viewer to the heart of the story that the artist wanted to tell. Moreover, this sculpture serves as a reminder to people to be aware of the consequences of wrongdoing.