Count Ugolino and his Sons in Prison

Count Ugolino and His Sons in Prison from 1826 at the Fitzwilliam Museum illustrates the harrowing episode from Dante's Inferno in which Count Ugolino is imprisoned with his sons and left to starve. Blake's Dante illustrations occupied his final years and represent his ultimate engagement with visionary poetry. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays linear, flame-like figures combining Michelangelesque anatomy with Gothic energy, vivid color in his illuminated books, personal mythological imagery of Albion, Los, Urizen, and the Eternals.

The confined prison space intensifies the emotional horror, the starving figures rendered with anatomical precision and the psychological anguish conveyed through Blake's powerful linear draftsmanship.