Bas-relief depicting the dead bodies of Count Ugolino della Gheradesca and his sons and grandsons, reputedly left to die imprisoned in a tower at Pisa in 1289.

The early 1837 inventories of the Museum record this wax as by Michelangelo. There is a Florentine relief of the same subject by Pierino da Vinci (c.1529-1553/54), which was for a long time attributed to Michelangelo and this perhaps led to the mis-attribution of this wax, although the Pierino composition, of which there are versions in wax (Ashmolean Museum WA1897.190) and in bronze (Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth) bears no relation to it. A parallel has also been suggested with the work of the sculptor and wax modeller Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (1656–1701) who created a group of high relief tableaux in wax depicting plagues and bodily corruption for the Grand Duke of Tuscany (today in the La Specola section of the Natural History Museum in Florence), but again, there appears to be no connection.

It seems likely that this low-relief wax, mounted on slate, in fact dates from between the 1790s and 1830s (Soane's lifetime) and was made in Britain. John Flaxman's illustrations to Dante include a depiction of the Death of Ugolino (1807; Tate) which resembles this relief in general terms, with a heap of horizontal bodies within a low arched vault. The left-hand figure, head down, is almost identical but the other figures are very different, those in this wax being more anguished and dressed in loin-cloths (Flaxman's drawn figures are wearing Florentine tunics and hose). However, some of Flaxman's other illustrations to Dante, for example The Vale of Disease (Tate T11105), depict bodies whose postures are closer to the anguished corpses in the wax and which are heaped up under a bridge strikingly similar to the arch in its background. Flaxman did produce wax studies, some of which are mounted on slate like this one (see V&A WE.739-2014) and one of which Soane acquired from the studio of his old friend after his death in 1826.

Interestingly, there appears to have been little interest in the subject as one of sculpture in Britain. Gunnis' A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851, records a single sculpture depicting this subject, a relief by John Gallagher of Count Ugolino and his sons in prison, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1835, number 1078 (untraced).

The story of Count Ugolino owes its fame to it's re-telling by Dante in his Inferno, book one of the Divine Comedy. Dante places Ugolino and his family in the section of Hell reserved for those who betray their country or kin. According to Dante, the prisoners were slowly starved to death and before dying Ugolino's children begged him to eat their bodies. Geoffrey Chaucer also recounted the story of Ugolino in his celebrated Caterbury Tales (in The Monk's Tale).