The detail
Start with his hands. He is biting them. Around his legs, four younger figures — sons and grandsons — press against him, and one of them is already limp. This is Count Ugolino of Pisa, locked in a tower in 1288 with his children and left to starve.
The record
The story is Dante’s, from the thirty-third canto of the Inferno: the children offer their own bodies so the father can live, and he cannot bring himself to do it. Carpeaux carved it in Rome, and the museum notes where he looked for the bodies — Michelangelo’s Last Judgement.
The line to keep
The marble weighs about two tons. The choice inside it weighs more.