Ugolino and His Sons Starving to Death in the Tower
Henry Fuseli (Swiss, active in England, 1741-1825)1806
View the original$14
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Materials & printing
Archival matte paper, 189 g/m² (10.3 mil), sourced from Japan, printed with multicolor water-based inkjet so every brushstroke stays crisp. Framed prints arrive ready to hang in a .75″ ayous-wood frame with an acrylite front. Sized to standard frames by cropping, never stretching — at most about 3% comes off one edge, which isn’t noticeable on most pieces, and we only offer a size when it stays that small.
Shipping & returns
Made to order and delivered in 5–8 business days (2–4 to print, 3–4 in transit). US shipping only for now. Because each print is made for your order, all sales are final — but if it arrives damaged or defective, send us a photo within 14 days and we’ll replace it free. Full policy.
Why is it this affordable?
A thin, flat margin on every piece — just enough to keep the store running. Most of what you pay is the print itself. We only sell sizes that reproduce at full quality, and we don’t mark up the large sizes the way most shops do.
About this work
Count Ugolino della Gherardesca was a medieval Italian nobleman of Pisa accused of treason and locked in a tower with his sons and grandsons to starve to death. He was made famous as one of the damned souls in Dante’s poem the Inferno. Dante leaves unclear the ghoulish question of whether or not Ugolino ate his offspring’s corpses, which would have appealed to Fuseli’s dark imagination.
In a drawing of exquisite refinement and sensitivity, Fuseli uses his media (pen, wash, and graphite) to great effect, capturing the despair bordering on madness expressed by Ugolino’s stoic figure and demeanor.
- Medium
- Pen and black ink and brush and black, gray, and red wash, over traces of graphite, on grayish-ivory laid paper
- Original size
- 63.9 × 52.2 cm (25 3/16 × 20 9/16 in.)
Museum record · 1 owner · 3 exhibitions
Provenance
- Sold, Puttick & Simpson, London, Oct. 23, 1914, to William F. E. Gurley (1870-1943), Chicago; given to the Art Institute of Chicago for the Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection, 1922.
Exhibitions
- London, The Tate Gallery, "Henry Fuseli," Feb. 19-Mar. 31, 1975; traveled to Hamburg, Dec. 14 1974-Jan. 15, 1975, and Paris, Petit Palais, Apr. 21-July 20, 1975, n.p..
- Los Angeles County Musem of Art, "Visions of Antiquity: Neoclassical Figure Drawings," July 22-Sept. 19, 1993; also Philadelphia Museum of Art, Oct. 30, 1993-Jan. 2, 1994; and Minneapolis Institute of Art,Feb. 6-Apr. 3, 1994.
- Art Institute of Chicago, "Shockingly Mad: Henry Fuseli and the Art of Drawing," Nov. 16, 2017-Apr. 1, 2018, no cat.
