The Bellelli Family (Family Portrait)

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The Bellelli Family (Family Portrait): Edgar Degas

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Edgar Degas Oil Painting - The Bellelli Family (Family Portrait)

Keywords: Bellelli, Family, Family, Portrait

Work Overview: The Bellelli Family (Family Portrait)
La famille Bellelli
Artist Edgar Degas
Year 1858–1867
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 200 cm × 253 cm (79 in × 100 in)
Location Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

The Bellelli Family, also known as Family Portrait, is an oil painting on canvas by Edgar Degas (1834–1917), painted ca. 1858–1867, and housed in the Musée d'Orsay. A masterwork of Degas' youth, the painting is a portrait of his aunt, her husband, and their two young daughters.

While finishing his artistic training in Italy, Degas drew and painted his aunt Laura, her husband the baron Gennaro Bellelli (1812–1864), and their daughters Giulia and Giovanna. Although it is not known for certain when or where Degas executed the painting, it is believed that he utilized studies done in Italy to complete the work after his return to Paris.[1] Laura, his father's sister, is depicted in a dress which symbolizes mourning for her father, who had recently died and appears in the framed portrait behind her. The baron was an Italian patriot exiled from Naples, living in Florence.

Laura Bellelli's countenance is dignified and austere, her gesture connected with those of her daughters. Her husband, by contrast, appears to be separated from his family. His association with business and the outside world is implied by his position at his desk. Giulia holds a livelier pose than that of her sister Giovanna, whose restraint appears to underscore the familial tensions.

In 1856 Degas left his home in Paris to study art and visit family relations in Italy, arriving in Naples on 17 July. In 1857 he traveled between Naples, where he stayed with his grandfather, Hilaire Degas, and Rome. At the end of July 1858 Laura Bellelli wrote to Degas from Naples, inviting him to stay with her in Florence; it was there that Gennaro Bellelli, who had been a political journalist supporting the fight for Italy's independence, took refuge from Austrian persecution after defeat of the Revolution of 1848.[2] Degas arrived in Florence by 4 August, living with his uncle Gennaro and making studies in the Uffizi.[3] By September he had become bored, did not get along well with Gennaro,[4] and remained only to see Laura, Giovanna, and Giulia, who had prolonged their stay in Naples following the death of Degas' grandfather Hilaire on 31 August.[3]

That there were strains within the Bellelli household at the time was almost certainly noticed by Degas, and confirmed by another uncle: "The domestic life of the family in Florence is a source of unhappiness for us. As I predicted, one of them is very much at fault and our sister a little, too."[5] Laura subsequently confided to Degas that, living in exile, she missed her Neapolitan family, and further, that her husband was "immensely disagreeable and dishonest... Living with Gennaro, whose detestable nature you know and who has no serious occupation, shall soon lead me to the grave."[1] Laura Bellelli was pregnant at the time, and it has been suggested that this circumstance, and the subsequent death of the child in infancy, may have contributed to her unhappiness and to domestic tensions in general.[6] These conflicts would provide both background and content for the painting.

he work of many artists provided inspiration: at this time Degas included in his correspondence mention of Anthony van Dyck, Giorgione, and Botticelli, among others.[4] Other prototypes whose influence have been cited, particularly in terms of composition, include 17th-century Dutch genre and portrait painting,[12] the portrait studies of Ingres,[13] Velázquez's Las Meninas,[5] the portraits of Hans Holbein, the Family of Charles IV by Francisco Goya, Gustave Courbet's After Dinner at Ornans, and a lithograph by Honoré Daumier entitled A Man of Property.[14] As in Las Meninas, a picture, mirror, and doorway are used to expand the space of the interior.[5] Any and all historical models were synthesized into a composition that was "unique in the painter's oeuvre and unique among the works of his contemporaries."[14] Taking Degas' family and their living environment as its subject, the painting represented Degas' first attempt "to characterize a room in relation to the personalities and interests of the individuals who inhabit it."[15]

Viewed alongside the work of Degas' contemporaries, the painting's uniqueness was due in large part to the composition, which presents a family portrait painted on the grand scale of a historical drama,[14] and whose content has been interpreted as psychologically penetrating, with the placement of the figures suggestive of the parents' alienation from one another, and of the divided loyalties of their children.[16] Laura Bellelli stands as if for an official portrait, her expression indicative of her unhappiness, one hand resting protectively on Giovanna's shoulder, the other balancing her pregnant body;[9] Giulia, in the center of the painting and seated in a small chair, displays youthful restlessness as she faces, arms akimbo, in the direction of her father, and is the compositional link between her estranged parents.[14] Gennaro appears indifferent, turned toward but seated apart from his family, his face mostly in shadow. The commanding figure of Laura is placed against a flat wall and a crisp picture frame, while Gennaro's more recessive figure is framed by a mantelpiece, bric-a-brac, and a reflective mirror. The clarity of the former's surroundings and the ambiguity of the latter's have been interpreted as expressive of their emotional distance.[17] Telling, also, is the physical distance between them, as well as the difference in their postures.[18] Their opposition has been seen as a "breaking of the frame": "it is as if [Gennaro] were morosely watching his family as they pose for his painter nephew".[19] The family dog glimpsed at the lower right corner is, according to Arthur Danto, sensibly "sneaking out of the picture before all hell breaks loose".[20] One is reminded of Laura Bellelli's note to Degas after he had returned to Paris: "You must be very happy to be with your family again, instead of being in the presence of a sad face like mine and a disagreeable one like my husband's."[21]

The drawing hung on the wall behind them is a portrait of the recently deceased Hilaire Degas, and was presumably a study for the portraits Degas made of his grandfather, drawn in the style of the Clouets.[22] By placing it directly behind his aunt's head, Degas was connecting the generations of his family, and following a convention of portraiture used since the Renaissance, that of including ancestral effigies.[22] By its very placement Degas was implicitly affirming his own presence and identifying with Laura, with whom, as their correspondence attests, he was unusually close.[21]

The unease of The Bellelli Family was not an anomaly, nor were such tensions revealed solely through the study of portraiture; in fact, alienation between the sexes was a recurring condition in Degas' work of the 1860s. Sulking and Interior Scene (The Rape) are both works of ambiguous content set in contemporary Paris, and The Young Spartan Girls Provoking the Boys and The Misfortunes of the City of Orleans occur in the ancient and medieval eras, yet in each "the element of hostility between the sexes is apparent",[18] and in the latter the hostility has turned deadly. The Bellelli Family is notable for introducing psychological conflict in a painting that documents his own family. Given his usual discretion, it is reasonable to assume that such expressions were the product of Degas' unconscious mind

At the time of its sale in 1918, the painting was in poor condition.[26] In addition to the black streaks and crackling, it had tears and was dust-covered, and may have been kept by Degas for many years rolled-up in the corner of his successive studios.[10] At some point, possibly in the 1890s, Degas restored the painting, sewing up tears, applying gesso to them, repainting Laura Bellelli's face, and retouching those of his uncle and cousins.[1] However, prior to the painting's sale a restorer apparently misinterpreted these repairs and scraped them off, re-injuring the portraits of Gennaro and Giulia.[1] The painting was subsequently restored in the 1980s.

Between the ages of 22 and 26, Edgar Degas completed his training in Italy, where part of his familly lived. Here he painted his father's sister, Laure, with her husband, the baron Bellelli (1812-1864) and her two daughters, Giula and Giovanna.

The baron was an Italian patriot, banned from Naples, who lived an exile in Florence. His wife is in mourning for her father, Hilaire, who died recently and whose portrait appears on the framed redline painting close to his daughter's face. In 1860, the two granddaughters, Giovanna and Giula, are 7 and 10. The mother is impressively dignified and affirms a slightly severe authority, contrasting with the relative aloofness of the father. This family portrait evokes those of Flemish painters, van Dyck in particular. Masterpiece of Degas's early years, this portrait evokes the family tensions isolating each member of the family. The imposing dimensions, the sober colours, the structured games of open perspectives (doors and mirrors), all converge in strengthening a climate of oppression. All the more so as suggestions of escape appear, such as this curious little dog split by the frame. The almost playful position of the younger daughter alone, crossing her leg under her skirt, contrasts with the heavy atmosphere whereas her elder sister seems already prisoner of adult conventions.

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Family portraits remained a favorite genre of artists during the first half of the 19th century and during the age of Baroque. The Bellelli Family (1858-1867, 200х250 cm) is almost disconnected from the rising Impressionist movement, though Edgar Degas soon became one of its leaders. Very likely it was this absence of bright formal novelty which led to the painting's remaining unnoticed when it appeared in 1867, and it was truly discovered only a half century later. Degas' group composition was scarcely a copy of old methods; on the contrary, it was an amazing development of these methods, drawing on the centuries-old tradition of figurative painting and combining them with the artistic investigations and insights which came following Impressionism, from Seurat to early Mondrian.

The personages shown in the Family Portrait (the author's original title) are Degas' aunt Laura Belleli together with her daughters Giovanna and Giulia and her husband Gennaro. She has just returned from the funeral of her father, Ilera Degas. The young artist, who was a grandson of the successful banker, inserted in the general composition a portrait of his grandfather done in sanguine in the manner of the Old Masters. Laura Bellelli is seen as an individual with a strong character and this is set off by the daughters next to her.

"The elder one," Degas wrote, "was in fact a little beauty. The younger one, on the other hand, was smart as can be and kind as an angel. I am painting them in mourning dress and small white aprons, which suit them very well…I would like to express a certain natural grace together with a nobility that I don't know how to define…" However, his initial idea of painting a mother and her children soon was pushed aside by another, more complex concept when the painter decided to present the whole family and to show it not only in the form of a combination of portraits of sitters, but as a painting in which ties of kinship unite different personages with their psychology.

Degas in no way put the accent on the relations between the spouses, but one can guess that they were not cloudless. The character of Gennaro Bellelli at the time when the artist became acquainted with him was spoiled by involuntary inactivity. At the start of his career, Bellelli engaged in political journalism and backed the fight for Italy's independence. After the defeat of the Revolution of 1848, he was forced to flee from his native Naples and took refuge from Austrian persecution in Florence. The circumstances of his Florentine home are shown by Degas in the portrait, where Gennaro is in a squeezed space and looks somewhat dispirited.

In making this large, ceremonial portrait, Degas did not deprive his sitters of naturalness and immediacy, finding for each personage the most expressive pose which matched his inner state. On no other composition did Degas work so long and so hard as on The Bellelli Family, as we can see from dozens of his preparatory studies. But the 19th century marched past one of its best works. At the 1867 Salon, the public simply paid no attention to the canvas. The real life of The Family began only after the artist's death when, in the beginning of 1918 the contents of his atelier were put up for sale. The painting was then seen to have not only evident artistic merit, but to embody the best qualities of French art. On the eve of the auction, Family Portrait was purchased by the Musee de Luxembourg. After it was closed in 1947, the painting was exhibited in the Musee d'Impressionisme (Jeu-de-Paumes), and then moved to the Musee d'Orsay, where it became one of the museum's treasures.

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Measuring 79 by 100 inches, The Bellelli Family is large oil on canvas painting by the French artist, Edgar Degas. It is on display at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. The painting is sometimes referred to as Family Portrait because the subjects were relatives of the artist.

Composition
The painting depicts the artist’s aunt, her husband, and their two children, all of whom lived in Italy. The aunt and children are all standing, facing more or less forward, while the husband is seated at a bureau. His face is shown in profile as he turns around to look at his wife and children.

The aunt is dressed completely in black, and it is generally thought that she was mourning for the death of her father, the artist’s grandfather.

The Bellelli Family
The woman in the picture is the painter’s aunt Laura, who was his father’s sister. Her husband was Gennaro Bellelli, and the children were Giulia and Giovanna. The family lived in Florence, where Bellelli had taken refuge after being forced to flee from Naples after an unsuccessful rebellion in which he played a major part.

Unknown Date
It is not known exactly when the painting was completed, but it was sometime between 1858 and 1867. Neither is it clear where the painting was done. It may have been started in Italy, where Degas went to study for a time, or it may have been done in his French studio. It is also possible that the artist began the work while in Italy and completed it when he returned to France.

It is known that Laura invited Degas to Florence in 1858, and the artist accepted the invitation and took the opportunity to study at the Uffizi gallery. He stayed with the Bellellis during his time in Florence. That is why it is very likely that he began the painting in Italy in that year.

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The Bellelli family is the largest painting Degas would ever create.
The portrait is a poignant portrayal of marital tension. Degas’s unhappy aunt, Laure, is pictured in mourning for her recently deceased father (Degas’s grandfather) Hilaire Degas, whose portrait hangs on the wall behind her. Gennaro, her embittered manic depressive husband, pointedly not wearing mourning clothes, sits with his back to the viewer. Caught between the dejected parents are their two charming daughters, Giulia and Giovanna, of whom Degas was very fond.
The sense of unease is accentuated by Giulia’s absent leg and the family dog, shown without its head, in the right foreground.

Edgar Degas had come to Italy, where part of his family lived, in 1856. In Florence in 1858, he painted his portrait of the Belleli family, which represented his first brush with tradition. He worked on the picture for almost ten years before showing it under the title Family Portraits at the 1867 Salon in Paris, where it passed unnoticed. He did numerous detail studies (faces, hands) and packed the composition with deliberate meaning.

The picture portrays the domestic drama of a family exiled from Naples to Florence, much to the despair of Laura (his seriously depressive cousin) and her irascible husband Gennaro, who had no proper job and whom we see turning almost reluctantly to face his wife and daughters. The youngest, Giulia, sitting on a stool with one leg tucked under her, appears impatient, lending animation to the whole, while in the great tradition of group effigies from the classical era Degas includes a portrait of his grandfather Hilaire Degas, on the wall behind his daughter Laura. Hilaire had just died in Naples (in 1858), hence the dark mourning dress, alleviated only by the girls' pinafores.

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