- 87
After Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux French, 1827-1875
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Description
- Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
- Ugolino
- unsigned, numbered 3
- bronze, very dark brown patina
Catalogue Note
Carpeaux's Ugolino was made for his fourth-year student project whilst a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome. This project was a strict part of the students' sojourn, but Carpeaux broke all the rules and persisted in his ambitious design against the will of his supervisor. The final result is the extraordinary monumental bronze cast in the Musée d'Orsay and the equally impressive marble in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
In finalising the complex five-figure compostion, inspired by Dante's tragic character from Canto XXXIII of L'Inferno, Carpeaux produced innumerable sketches and maquettes. One of these, which was probably finished around December 1858, records a stage in the genesis of the group in which only three sons are included. It has been suggested that a plaster cast of this maquette remained at the Villa Medici, the home of the French Academy, and provided the model for several casts subsequently taken from it by later generations of students.
RELATED LITERATURE
Romantics to Rodin, nos.30-32, pp.146-48
In finalising the complex five-figure compostion, inspired by Dante's tragic character from Canto XXXIII of L'Inferno, Carpeaux produced innumerable sketches and maquettes. One of these, which was probably finished around December 1858, records a stage in the genesis of the group in which only three sons are included. It has been suggested that a plaster cast of this maquette remained at the Villa Medici, the home of the French Academy, and provided the model for several casts subsequently taken from it by later generations of students.
RELATED LITERATURE
Romantics to Rodin, nos.30-32, pp.146-48