Ugolino and His Sons free essay sample

Art had played an important role in building up civilizations from all over the world through thousands of centuries. It is and will always still the way of projecting artists’ ideas and thoughts into meaningful and tangible objects which we called â€Å"work of art†. In addition, It was the path through all these years that dug its way to reach to our current century to show us the beauty of every single era starting from the Upper Paleolithic Period of time (42,000 – 8,000 BCE) reaching to our contemporary artists of today. One of the most representing works to the Eclecticism period, a sculpture was titled â€Å"UGOLINO AND HIS SONS†. It was done in 1861 CE using Saint-Beat marble. It has a size of approximately (78. 75 in. x 59 in. x 43. 5 in. ), height to width to depth ratio. The sculpture was done by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, a French sculptor and painter who was born in Valenciennes, Nord, and part of northern France in 1827. Carpeaux was a student to the French sculptor Francois Rude. He won the Prix de Rome in 1854 which enabled him to live in Rome (1856 – 1862). During that time he was influenced by the works of Italian sculptors of the Renaissance period such as Michelangelo, Donatello, and Andrea Del Verrocchio. He also started to increase his focus of studies on complex sculptures and bas-reliefs. His passion led him to start carving several pieces on marble before the famous work of art â€Å"Ugolino and His Sons†. Carpeaux was considered as one of the mainstream artists in Eclecticism. This movement wanted to exceed Neoclassicism and Romanticism and also described the combination, in a single work, of elements from different historical styles. Carpeaux received many honors during his lifetime until two months before he died prematurely of cancer at the age of 48 in Courbevoie in 1875 CE. The sculpture shows (Figure 1. 1) a man sitting on a stone cuffed with chains in his legs. The man’s facial expressions seemed as grief while biting the tip of some of his fingers. The wrinkles on top of his eyes with his curled toes on each other gave the sense of a clueless situation the man was put in. Surrounding him, there’re four different-aged kids; two of them on the left side of their father’s position, as they gave the emotion of looking at their father begging. And on the right side, there’re the two other kids where the smallest kid fell on the ground looking dead. The sculpture depicts the tale of a traitor who was the Count of Donoratico and was imprisoned by the archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini in the late thirteenth century (June 1288). The archbishop imprisoned Ugolino with his sons and grandsons in the â€Å"Tower of Hunger†. Also, the archbishop ordered the soldiers to throw the keys of Ugolino’s prison in the Arno River so that there’s no way for them to be set free. They were sentenced to be left to starve in February 1289. Ugolino had this prophetic dream of the archbishop and his soldiers as the lord and huntsman killing the wolf the wolf cubs (Ugolino and his offspring). Ugolino had his heart-broken for hearing his sons sobbing in their sleep asking for bread. He also kept his feelings inside, he had never wept, and he used to watch his kids weeping but him feeling clueless paralyzed-thinking. Yet his offspring dreams couldn’t fill their stomach. Ugolino’s kids started to look at him, wondered why he turned out to look like a stone, biting his fingers and curling his toes of one leg on top of the other one. For them, they thought that their father is starving just like them or maybe more but for Ugolino himself, he was biting his fingers in anguish, weeping inside for not being able to feed his offspring. Therefore, they started to offer their bodies to their father so he can eat and survive. After few days, his offspring started to fall down dead one by another till the last one died on the sixth day. This part is quoted from â€Å"The Divine Comedy, Vol. I: Inferno (Canto 33) – Dante Alighieri†. It illustrates moments of death of Ugolino’s offspring and the mystery behind the possibility of Cannibalism: â€Å"I calmed myself to make them less unhappy. That day we sat in silence, and the next day. O pitiless Earth! You should have swallowed us! 66 The fourth day came, and it was on that day My Gaddo fell prostrate before my feet, Crying: Why dont you help me? Why, my father? 69 There he died. Just as you see me here, I saw the other three fall one by one, As the fifth day and the sixth day passed. And I, 72 By then gone blind, groped over their dead bodies. Though they were dead, two days I called their names. Then hunger proved more powerful than grief. 75 He spoke these words; then, glaring down in rage, attacked again the live skull with his teeth sharp as a dogs, and as fit for grinding bones. â€Å"78 The sculpture presented an art based on the late thirteenth century story. As during that time, there were a lot of wars in Italy between divisions of the country for the power and authority. And Ugolino was an example of one of the traitors in that era who cheated their people. The sculpture contained many symbols that had meanings during the time of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Speaking about the head of the main character of the sculpture (Ugolino), it contained so many gestures like the wrinkles on top of his eyebrows which gave the sense of mixture of anger and sorrow for his situation in the prison. Also, Carpeaux illustrated other gestures of the face to match the context like the way his bottom lip bent because of the thickness of the tip of his fingers and the way they were put into his mouth. Away from the head, the sculpture presented the way Ugolino’s body shrinking and taking a smaller form by bending his back to the front, putting his arm on his leg, crossing up his legs to each other and putting his curled toes on top of each other. These all resembled the intensive way of thinking and worrying that Ugolino had about his offspring. Moreover, the naked state of all of the figures’ bodies (Ugolino and his sons) expresses the darkness of the situation where is nothing surrounding them but starvation and the dreadful dreams of it. On top of that, the sculpture presented his four different-aged kids with different angles of bodies and gestures. As the eldest (the one on the bottom left) is hugging his father’s legs offering his body to his father so his suffer can end and his dad can sustain more. Also, the youngest (the one on the bottom right) seemed dead on the ground underneath Ugolino because of starving, closing his eyes and relying all his body on Ugolino’s legs. But he also imaged both of the two middle-aged kids on the top right and on the top left – as they seemed halfway hopeless of living anymore trying to hold on to their father. The one on the left was trying to put his arms on his father’s thigh so he doesn’t fall like his youngest brother. And the one on the right was trying to hide himself beneath his father’s chest, so the starvation doesn’t reach him. In the meantime, the cuffs and the chain that hold Ugolino’s legs to the stone express the very tight chance of Ugolino to survive as well as his offspring. He also showed that the cuffs were holding only Ugolino and not his offspring which gave the sense of feeling that kids cannot do anything without their father. The artist’s visionary composition reflected his reverence to the works of Michelangelo, whose figurative gestures he often assimilated into his own works. And that can be seen in Ugolino sculpture. As it gives a full dramatic scene of his posed body and his kids pose as well. The style of this sculpture is perceptual as by just looking to the sculpture, the viewer can imagine the whole scene. He supported his sculpture with the three dimensionality of it, taking care of all corners of the whole sculpture such as taking care of how the back of all their bodies was made finely. And that’s one of the main points the artist became a leader at; he succeeded to combine the drama of the Renaissance period and the realism of the Baroque period, looking for inspiration in the styles of the past without prioritizing the antique ones and that’s also what made him an official leader to the movement called Eclecticism. The artist took care of describing the story tale through the figures’ bodies. He took care of showing the devouring moments of the offspring through their facial expressions and through the movement of their bodies. He also provided the sculpture with more realistic touches such as carving the hollow part of each one of the figures’ eyes which gave more oriented sight to each one of them, except the father, which the artist carved the hollow part to show him looking straight forward. The father’s eye sight gave the viewer mixture of senses of horror and sadness in the same time. He also took care of carving the left side-kids’ fingers that seemed to be squashing their fathers’ flesh inside. As the viewer sees the old son laying on the ground, leaning his bodies towards his father’s, looking unto him and his fingers are clinging around his father’s legs. On the contrary of this scene, the viewer sees the little kid on the right side who is laying on the ground with no hollow part in his eyes which means they were closed while his body is totally corpse as of no eating for long time comparing to his age. he showed the other two kids’ gestures as tired of weeping over no food and also showed them trying to ask their father for help by looking at him or hiding between his arms while the father whose body gave a non-merciful state onto his offspring. He succeeded to show the main figure in grief and anguish more than caring over his kids during that hard time. He chose excellently the right medium to carve such sculpture, as the marble was the first choice of most of the artists during that time. Not only because marble was so commonly available during that period, but also because one of the best characteristics of marble was the translucency. In addition, carving marble was an easy mission to get a slight translucent surface that looks like a human skin. Moreover, marble sculpture used to give a visual depth beyond its surface and this evokes the realism of such sculpture which helped the artist to show more details about the scene. Speaking about the design elements that the artist took care of, the viewer can notice that the artist showed a contrast through the sculpture by referring to differences in textures of each one of the sculpture’s body with different shapes of haircuts, different body appearances and different facial features. Although the sculpture didn’t contain geometric shapes as it represents humanly figures, he succeeded to have rich sculpture full of soft edges all the way, but also he succeeded to include hard edges on the back of the sculpture where the stone that Ugolino sat on was carved. The artist also showed the balance he created in the sculpture by showing the symmetry of having Ugolino in the middle of the scene and two kids on the right side and two kids on the left side regarding their different motions and body moves. In addition to that, the artist made a great sense of rhythm in the sculpture by having a repetition of the visual movement like the repetition of the lines in the sculpture such as the veins which bulge out of the same places of almost everybody in the sculpture, also the repetition of the same muscles in Ugolino’s body and his eldest son taking the size of the muscles into consideration according to their age differences. Also, the rhythm was shown by the physical moves the sculpture bodies made, starting off Ugolino’s body and ending with his youngest offspring. One of the opinions written about Ugolino and his Sons as a work of art of the artist Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was by Gary Boyler a fine art contemporary artist. Gary illustrated his opinion of the work saying â€Å"Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux shows the anguished father resisting his children’s offer of their own bodies for his sustenance. The composition was cast in bronze in Paris in 1862. This Saint-Beat marble now resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. What is most striking about this composition and most other works by Carpeaux is the influence of Michelangelo. You can see the influences of the High Renaissance in every detail of this masterpiece. When you are viewing this piece, it is almost as if you are being visited by the specters of the High Renaissance Masters. The work is handled very classically and traditionally. When you contrast this work with sculpture by Auguste Rodin, who was working in marble and clay at about the same time as Carpeaux, you can see the strong differences without a moment‘s hesitation. In his sculpture, Rodin takes the road of the Impressionists, pushing the boundaries of his art toward the future modernist movements. Carpeaux, however, retreats backward to the older, more tried and true approaches. He forgoes the modern in his work for the traditional. Does Carpeaux succeed in his attempts to mimic the Old Masters? Carpeaux is not Michelangelo, that can be said with certainty. But his work is astounding. He clearly deserves his place in the annals of art–even if it is in the shadow of Michelangelo. His pieces live and breathe and tell their stories well. † According to the label of the work, Ugolino Sculpture was one of the most historical sculptures to Carpeaux as it showed his great influence with Michelangelo and generally with the Renaissance period. The work tells about the hellish dilemma of the Pisan traitor Ugolino who was imprisoned with his sons in the Tower of Hunger and sentenced to starvation till death. One of the great thoughts behind this story was the mystery of cannibalism which said that he probably ate his own offspring as they asked him to do in order to live longer. But also, choosing Carpeaux to this mystery to carve a model about gives deep thoughts by just looking to the sculpture. On top of that, He supported the mystery with additional expressive pieces of the sculpture such as the chains, Ugolino’s facial expressions and his eldest son sitting down on his knees and looking to his father. The sculpture creates visual excitement and interest to the viewer by having symmetrical scene of Ugolino himself in the middle surrounded by his offspring on the right and on the left. Also, the artist used the visual elements and the design elements perfectly to show every single possible detail in the scene that gives life to the sculpture.