(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)