Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux at the MET and the Divine Comedy

In the relationship between form and information, it may happen that a poetic source is stronger than a scientific or historiographical one, even when this former is not verified by the evidence. A good example is provided by the way in which artists have dealt with the subject of “Ugolino and his sons”.

 

Ugolino della Gherardesca (Pisa, 1220-1289), an important Italian nobleman and politician, is nowadays mostly famous for being sentenced to prison in a tower, along with his sons and grandchildren, where he died of starvation, while the key of the tower was thrown into the river Arno. In the story of the Earl Ugolino, truth and fiction are deeply mixed. According to the legend, for example, the Earl would eat his children in order not to die of hunger. But both history and science have never confirmed this hypothesis.

 

However, today, the Earl Ugolino is remembered almost exclusively for this anecdote. About 20 years after his death, the poet Dante Alighieri represented the Earl as a character in his Divine Comedy. And even though, in the canto of the Inferno, the episode of cannibalism is represented in an ambiguous way, thus offered to different interpretations, the strength of this poetic representation has influenced the imaginations of many artists.

 

In particular, the depiction of the death of the Earl was based, most of the time, on the popular verses by Dante. This phenomenon has affected both those who have illustrated book’s editions of the Divine Comedy (from Giovanni Stradano to William Blake) and those who have chosen the end of Earl Ugolino as an autonomous subject of their work.

 

Among the latter ones (in addition to that made by Auguste Rodin, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris), it is worthy to mention the piece by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875), now on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York along with his other works ( “The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux” from 10 March to 26 May).

 

The Ugolino by Creapeaux is portrayed with his fingers over his mouth to symbolize hunger, while at his feet his children and grandchildren implore him to eat their flesh so that he may not die. A further evidence of how the Divine Comedy, as a reference, has overcome through the ages any other source in determining the fortune of a subject.

“Poscia che fummo al quarto dì venuti
Gaddo mi si gettò disteso a’ piedi,
e disse: “Padre mio, ché non m’aiuti?”
Quivi morì; e come tu mi vedi,
vid’io cascar li tre ad uno ad uno
tra il quinto dì e ‘l sesto; ond’io mi diedi,
già cieco, a brancolar sovra ciascuno,
e due dì li chiamai, poi che fur morti
Poscia, più che il dolor, poté il digiuno.
“Quand’ebbe detto ciò, con li occhi torti
riprese ‘l teschio misero co’ denti,
che furo a l’osso, come d’un can, forti”

(Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, Inferno XXXIII, 67-78)

 

July 18, 2015