Objects in Focus : Ugolino and his Sons
This week’s featured model is the famous sculpture group ‘Ugolino and his Sons’ by the French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. The sculpture, standing at just under two metres, epitomises the Romantic preoccupation with extreme physical and emotional states. The subject is taken from Dante’s Inferno, in which a suspected traitor, Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, is condemned to die imprisoned in a tower with his sons and grandsons.
Carpeaux depicted the moment at which the count, yielding to hunger and despair, contemplates cannibalism. Ugolino looks into the distance, the style reflecting the Vatican’s Laocoon and His Sons. 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.
The sculpture is considered a masterpiece of French Realism and is widely considered as one of the artist’s greatest works. Created after he won the Prix de Rome in 1854, Carpeaux took his references from Michaengelo’s works — particularly his Last Judgment panel of the Sistine Chapel.
A few copies of the work; from the marble that was produced under Carpeaux’s supervision, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to the Parisian Tuileries bronze made in 1863. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek’s piece, a terracotta, was 3D scanned by the Scan the World team on their visit to Copenhagen in 2022. We used our Artec Eva 3D scanner, which took around five minutes to capture each angle. Capturing a sculpture that is two metres tall is difficult, fortunately a taller Thor was on hand to help out in reaching the top of the sculpture! Thank you Thor!
The sculpture is free to download (CC0) from Scan the World, accessible here.
The data was processed using Artec Studio 17 in HD mode. The resulting 3D model was made 3D printable with thanks to our good friends Min Zheng, :李全宝 Li Quanbao (responsible for surface suture and basic model),刘炜坡 Liu Weipo (responsible for partial restoration), and廖道煌 Liao Daohuang (responsible for partial restoration).
