The Pisan "Cannibal" Count Ugolino Gherardesca was a historical personage best known from Dante's fictional depiction of him in Inferno. He was betrayed by his co-conspirator the Archbishop Ruggieri and imprisoned, along with his sons and grandsons.
The legend
According to Dante, the prisoners were slowly starved to death and before dying Ugolino's children begged Ugolino to eat their bodies, which he did after being driven mad with hunger. For this reason Ugolino is known as the "Cannibal" Count and is often depicted biting his own fingers ("eating of his own flesh", a reference to his horrible sin) in consternation, as in the sculpture of the Gate to Hell by Auguste Rodin, Ugolino and his Sons by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and other artwork. Ugolino appears in the Inferno as both a damned soul and a punishing demon who gnaws vengefully at the skull of the evil Ruggieri.
In 2002, Italian archaeologist Francesco Mallegni found what he believes are the remains of Ugolino and his children. DNA analysis agrees with the remains being a father, his sons, and his grandsons. Additional comparison to DNA from modern day members of the Gherardesca family leave Mallegni about 98 percent sure that he has identified the remains correctly. Forensic analysis discredits the cannibalism story. Analysis of the rib bones of the putative Ugolino skeleton reveals traces of magnesium, but no zinc, implying he had consumed no meat in the weeks before his death; apparently the starvation part of the story is at least partly correct. Ugolino also had few remaining teeth and is believed to have been in his 70s or 80s when he was imprisoned, making it further unlikely that he could have outlived and eaten his descendants in captivity, as the cannibalism account requires.
Additionally, Mallegni notes that the putative Ugolino skull was damaged; perhaps he did not ultimately die of starvation, although malnourishment is evident. In 2003 Mallegni was to publish an Italian language book about his study of the Ugolino remains.
Ugolino dell Gheradesca, whose story is told in Canto 33 of Dante'sInferno, was an Italian nobleman in the Guelph party who was made podesta of Pisa in 1284.
In a conspiracy contrived by the Ghibelline Archbishop Ruggeri, Ugolino was accused of having betrayed his town by being negligent in battle.
The Ugolino group was acquired for the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the centenary of its first exhibition (in 1967).
In the 'Divine Comedy', Dante meets Ugolino in the lowest region of Hell, gnawing the skull of his former friend, then fiend Ubaldini: because both men were guilty of treachery, they were condemned to eternal punishment in the ninth Circle of Hell, reserved for traitors.
The painting 'Ugolino' (1806) by Johann Heinrich Fussli (1741-1825), now in the Kunsthaus Zürich, proves that at least Rodin was not the only artist recurring to the Pietà concept for a portrait of the starving Count.
Rodin himself was so convinced of his creation, that he detached the head of one of the sons, and enlarged it seperately in different media; this 'Head of Sorrow' was used for Paolo in 'Fugit Amor'; it also was exhibited as an indepent sculpture and carved in marble.
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