A Relief of Ugolino and his Sons, After Pierino da Vinci (Vinci 1530 - 1533 Pisa), Italian, in Renai

Property from the Collection of Cristina and Marco Grassi

Marble, within a later wood frame
framed: 31 in. by 25 ⅛ in.
78.74 cm. by 63.8 cm.

Literature

N. Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. I, Oxford, 1992, p. 96;
Charles Avery, ‘Pierino da Vinci’s ‘Lost’ Bronze Relief of ‘The Death by Starvation of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and his Sons’ rediscovered at Chatsworth’, in Pierino da Vinci. Atti della giornata di studi, Vinci and Florence 1995, S. 57-61 pp. 57-65, reprinted in Avery, Studies in Italian Sculpture, London, 2001, p. 168, n. 8, p. 177, fig. 2.

Catalogue note

Known through many versions in different materials (wax and terracotta, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and private collection, Florence), the original bronze version, mentioned by Vasari, was lost and later identified at Chatsworth in 2010 after which it was sold by Sotheby’s to the Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna. The bronze was made for Luca Martini dell’Ala while he was in Pisa in the service of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici.

The subject is taken from Canto XXXIII of Dante's Divine Comedy and and the relief illustrates a scene from Dante’s Inferno which recounts the story of how the Florentine Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and his sons were imprisoned in a tower and left to starve by the Pisans. The powerful figure of Ugolino sits at the right of the relief, clasping a draped cloth across his stomach, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Moses on the Julius II tomb in S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. He is accompanied by four naked male figures, representing his sons (sometimes referred to as his sons and grandsons). Above them, dominating the upper part of the relief, hovers a screeching hag representing Hunger, wrapped in billowing drapery. The flowing water running along the lower section of the relief represents the river Arno, personified as a reclining, classical River God,

Pierino da Vinci was Leonardo da Vinci’s nephew. He trained briefly under the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli (1493-1560), and with Niccolò Tribolo (1500-50), working in the orbit of the leading Mannerist artists of the day at the Medici court. He died of a fever in his early twenties. for Luca Martini dell’Ala, who was then in Pisa in the service of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici.

RELATED LITERATURE
N. Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum 1540 to Present Day, vol. I Italian, Oxford, 1992, nos. 72 and 73, pp. 95-100.