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Degas, The Bellelli Family

Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Family, 1858-67, oil on canvas, 78-3/4 x 98-1/2 inches, 200 x 250 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker.
Degas was in his mid-twenties when he painted this canvas. It depicts from left to right, the ten-year-old Giovanna, her mother, the artist's paternal aunt Laura, her younger daughter, Giula age 7, and the Baron Gennaro Bellelli. Preparatory sketches for the painting may have been made in Florence where the family was living—the Baron had been exiled from Naples. The picture may have been completed in Paris.

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Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.

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  • leaf green style avatar for user jennifer
    Is Edgar Degas famos for paintings of ballerinas and dancers? I could be wrong. I have seen a beautiful ballet dance called degas and the theme around it was Edagar Degas painting ballet dancers.
    (8 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user Jon Dough
    The little girls look like they're wearing maid uniforms or maybe even pilgrim garment? Was this really the fashion of that time and place?
    (4 votes)
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    • leaf blue style avatar for user Peterson
      Those are neither pilgrim's garments nor maid's uniforms - although they do seem to resemble both. What the two girls are wearing was actually the style of the time, although it should be mentioned that they were not the most elite, fashionable dresses of the period. Many of the wealthier class had much more decorative (and fashionable) styles, while these, though still what many of the day wore, are more simple, and better suited to the middle class in which the subjects seem to have lived.
      (5 votes)
  • mr pink red style avatar for user chandlerpritchett
    Lets discuss that oddly cropped dog in the bottom right corner. Is this our one nod in this painting to the Impressionists' struggle between photographic and traditional 19th century oil painting portraits? It's like the dog from the Arnolfini portrait got lost.
    (5 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user l k
    ok, It's Degas, who is later known for impressionism in some of his paintings, but I'm not sure what about this painting is impressionist. Realist, it is surely. He made preparatory sketches, so it wasn't painted 'live' the way impressionist landscapes were done; and it is easy to read without painterly atmospherics, so what about this painting is impressionistic?
    (3 votes)
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    • starky sapling style avatar for user LaraCaoimhe
      A big part of impressionism was the transition of subject matter from religious, mythical or historical paintings to contemporary scenes and landscapes. What makes it impressionist is that the subject matter is informal, although it is structured (As Renoir's work usually is) it does contain some spontaneity in that everyone is looking somewhere else, it's not a perfect portrait that they look like they posed specifically for like the Arnolfinnis. Instead the man is facing away and the girls are all looking in different directions.
      (1 vote)
  • leafers ultimate style avatar for user Hana
    I think there is a lying(or dead) cat near the sitting man's chair.
    Am I mistaken?
    If so, what is it?
    If I'm right, why is there a dead cat?
    (2 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Ms Houlihan
    In this video we hear that Degas often stayed with his mother's sister while in Italy, the woman in the painting, but was it not his Farther's sister?
    (2 votes)
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  • starky sapling style avatar for user LaraCaoimhe
    I've seen Bellelli spelled as it is here and as Belleli, can anyone confirm which is right for sure? Thanks
    (1 vote)
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  • leaf yellow style avatar for user Adam
    i find it fascinating how they brought up the role of asymmetry do most artists bring the role of asymmetry into their art? or is this solely dependent on the artist?
    it brings to mind the asymmetry of the family unit when i look at this painting.
    (2 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Robert Woolley
    Why was the Baron exiled from Naples? And what's with the legs, or better, the lack of them... Perhaps after the exile, the family didn't have a leg to stand on...
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Daniela383
    Are there any dance videos for beginners on this site..... ones that can teach you the basics.
    (1 vote)
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Video transcript

(jazz music) Dr. Zucker: We're in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and we're looking at Edgar Degas' first great masterpiece. This is The Bellelli Family. It's actually a portrait of his own relatives. Degas, in his early career, went to Italy a number of times. When he went, he often stayed with his mother's sister, who is portrayed here in black. Dr. Harris: It's interesting to think about Degas in his early 20s first copying art in the Louvre, as a young art student, and then going to Florence and Rome and copying all the great masters. There is something that seems like early Italian Renaissance here, to me, in the way that the figures have a kind of stiffness. Dr. Zucker: But it's also a stiffness that I think is expressive of their social class. Degas' aunt here is married to a baron, the man who's seated, and there is this sense of the formality in their station, especially in a portrait and although this is not a traditional formal portrait, after all, the baron is literally facing away from us, nevertheless there is still a sense of the gravity of their place in the world. Dr. Harris: One could also read that as familial tensions, I think. It's probably all of those things at once. The mother looks out of the painting, past all of the figures. She's dressed in black in mourning for her father, who's pictured in the drawing behind her. Dr. Zucker: Notice how her gaze is perfectly aligned with the top of the matting of that red pencil drawing. Look at the young girl in the middle of the canvas. She is locked into the frame of that classical desk. The man is in that heavy, raw, upholstered chair and it's appropriate to his weight. The girl on the much more delicate chair. There really is a way that geometry, in a sense, structures this family. Dr. Harris: Finish talking about that psychological aspect here. Everyone seems to have their role and their psychological space. The mother in that decent way, the child in the center, the younger child who looks like she's not going to be locked in, in a way. Dr. Zucker: No, in fact, look at the way that only one of her feet, in fact only the toes of one foot is touching the ground. Dr. Harris: She's tucked the other leg underneath. Dr. Zucker: That's right, so there is a kind of asymmetry there. Dr. Harris: And there's a kind of distance between the husband and the wife and only the one daughter, who's looking very prim and proper, looks out at us and meets our gaze, but there is that formality and locked in sense that I think is working on class levels and emotional levels and the space of the interior. Dr. Zucker: You said something about how we see here and how the gaze works here and how vision works here. I think that that's really important, the fact that the figures are really not looking at each other, with the possible exception of the father gazing at his daughters and the one daughter gazing at us. Then, in the upper right corner, you've got a reflection in the mirror over the mantle. Is that a window, is that another framed mirror, is that a painting, and this notion of what it means to look and the complexity and the reflection of looking itself. The painting is, I think, a really early and important and ambitious essay, not only on intimacy or lack of intimacy, not only on social station, but also on what it means to create a painting that is about the internal relationships, through vision, amongst these family members. Dr. Harris: I see it also as something that we see as a thread through Degas, paintings that look very spontaneous and natural, but which are carefully composed with a real sense of geometric order. Dr. Zucker: It feels incredibly rigorous, doesn't it? Dr. Harris: It does, and the colors are just, the blue ... Dr. Zucker: Oh, it's gorgeous. Dr. Harris: Yes. (jazz music)