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  Graduated in Literature with a Historical/Artistic focus in Turin, Master’s in “Anti-counterfeiting of Works of Art” in Pietrasanta, she has lived and worked for many years in Florence.

  In addition to teaching, she works as an Art Critic and consultant for Artists, Collectors, and Gallery Owners.

  She has curated and continues to curate solo exhibitions for Artists and writes readings, reviews, and printed catalogues for Artists all over the world.

  She also writes about theater and for actors.

  She collaborates with cultural magazines, both print and digital.

A CRITICAL TEXT OF HIS - EDGAR DEGAS IN FLORENCE

Genesis of a masterpiece

About this important artist, whose centenary of death falls in this year 2017, there is much information, but, strangely, critics overlook some facts that are actually well documented. For example, the contribution to his artistic training of the long journey he made through Italian territories between 1855 and 1858 is little considered. Also, there is no mention, in the writings dedicated to him, of the fact that he certainly spoke Italian as well as French, since both these languages were known by his father, Pierre Auguste Hiacynthe Degas, who was born in Naples in 1807 to an Italian mother.

These two details seem to me decisive for the youth formation of the Artist and also for fully understanding the significance of the period of training in Italy throughout the entire life of the man and the artist.

Many biographies mention artistic studies undertaken by Degas in Paris at the Academy, but the documentary evidence is clear: Edgar, as he was called in the family to avoid confusion with his paternal grandfather by not using his first name, Hilaire, lasted only a few months at the Academy in Paris before leaving for Italy, where his grandfather and a large family awaited him.

The first stop of the journey is Naples, where his uncles, aunts, and cousins, Morbilli and Cicerale, await him with Grandpa Hilaire. He spends the summer at the villa in Capodimonte and then goes to Rome, where he plans to further his studies by attending classes at Villa Giulia. In Rome, he befriends other French and Italian artists, but his stay is interrupted by a letter from his grandfather, who calls him back to Naples. He is unwell, the first signs of the illness that will lead to his death, and he wants his beloved grandson by his side, the first male of the new generation of the family, the one who will carry on both the surname and the name.

During the two stays with his Grandfather, the Artist created two portraits of the old gentleman: one in color, full-length, elegantly dressed, seated on a sofa in the villa at Capodimonte; the second, only of the face, drawn on paper with sanguine.

After the long stay in Rome, which was also interspersed with trips to places that aroused the young Artist's interest: Viterbo, Siena, Orvieto, Assisi, where the encounter with Giotto is dramatic, of great evocative power; he travels up the peninsula and the stop in Florence is a must.

Not only is art awaiting him in this city, but also Aunt Laure with her husband Gennaro Bellelli, an anti-Bourbon political exile, and their two daughters Giovanna and Giulia.

The Bellelli family resides in Piazza Maria Antonia, in the new buildings just constructed with the expansion within the walls, of the residential area in the so-called "Orto del Barbano." In the new neighborhood lives Cristiano Banti, a well-known painter, member of the "macchia" group, open to new acquaintances with artists, host in the city to Boldini and Saverio Altamura, the latter also living in Barbano. Among Degas's other friendships in Florence, also thanks to his frequenting of the "Caffè Michelangelo," is that with Diego Martelli, theorist and historian of the macchiaioli group, descendant of an ancient Florentine family, a friendship that would be strengthened by Martelli's stays in Paris and would culminate with the oil portrait of his friend, painted by Degas in 1879.

Telemaco Signorini remembers Degas as a regular attendee and active participant in the artistic debate on the themes of light and shadow that took place at the “Caffè Michelangelo.” This testimony definitively assures us of Degas's mastery of the Italian language, and consequently helps us understand how the long period of his journey in Italy was fully experienced by both the man and the painter. The importance of this journey and the experience connected to it would remain a human and cultural asset for the artist's entire life.

During his stay in Florence, which began in the summer of 1858, the painter's mind was increasingly occupied with the idea of creating a large painting that would bring together the “memories” of that tour—memories that were both artistic and sentimental, relating to his personal inner search as a young man as well as his artistic studies and research. This painting was conceived and would become a recognized masterpiece of the painter's youth.

For this painting Degas made a hundred preparatory drawings, which demonstrate the fundamental importance of the work not only in the artist's career but also in his life, a painting from which he would never part and which would remain in his studio until his death.

Cristiano Banti, who sees the painting in an early stage, is so impressed that he cites Van Dyck as a reference for the evocative power of the main figure, that is, Aunt Laure.

In Degas' notebooks from that period, we find a note about the painting that was taking shape in his mind: “I have various ideas for the background. I would like to achieve a certain natural grace along with a nobility that I cannot quite define.”

This work, "The Portrait of the Bellelli Family," would only be completed in 1867 after a long and slow process in the painter's Parisian studio. The painting, the largest Degas ever created, two meters by two and a half meters, depicts the bourgeois living room of the Bellelli family with all the family members present. The scene is entirely dominated by the blue tones of the wallpaper, which is intended to be a "positive" background for a scene that, at first glance, already reveals strong tensions.

What anyone immediately notices is the undeniable reality that the four protagonists do not look at each other nor at the artist who portrays them. The first thought, therefore, would be to believe that there was not a good relationship between the subjects and the painter. But this is contradicted by the correspondence between the aunt and the nephew, which actually shows full confidence and understanding between them. Even the two little girls are the protagonists of tender observations, recorded in notebooks, by Degas, who informs us of the affectionate relationships that always existed between Edgar Degas and the Bellelli cousins, who would be the subject, throughout their lives, of many works by their cousin, both together and individually.

Just as the family members occupy the width of the painting, so too, vertically, the canvas presents no fewer than six vertical “sections” that, similar to stage wings, give depth to a space that only appears two-dimensional. From the left, before the close movement that brings mother and daughter together, a door with a barely suggested window can be glimpsed, which seems to be one of the sources of light in the painting. The wall that begins after this opening is behind the main protagonist, Laure Degas, who, completely dressed in mourning, occupies a central part of the painting with the bearing of a tragic heroine. The two little girls are also dressed in black clothes, highlighted by their pristine, opulent aprons; the girls create two pauses, thanks to that white, in the emotional harshness of the painting. The girls seem able to soothe, with their emotional and affectionate participation, the pain of the mother, which is tied both to the loss of the father and to the tribulations of married life.

Giulia is captured in a distracted attitude, typical of children tired from the length of the pose, with her body not touching her mother and, in fact, she seems to be leaning towards her father who, just turned to the left, watches her odd movements. He, placed at the far right of the painting, is seated on a black armchair, perhaps symbolizing his exile, almost engulfed in the fireplace topped by a mirror that defines the depth of the room also through the reflection of a door open onto another space that shows a window with the curtain moved by the air.

At the exact center of the composition, standing out against the blue wallpaper, highlighted by a double golden frame, dominates the sanguine portrait of Hilaire Degas, from whose funeral the Daughter has just returned to Florence.

It is easy to see, just by reflecting, that with the image of the Grandfather, the painting is also a portrait of the Degas family, at least of a very close part of it, that is, the one composed of the father, the favorite daughter, her two daughters, and the grandson who bears his name and who is the author of the painting.

The two Hilaires, grandfather and grandson, are ideally facing each other, one at the center of the scene to be painted and the other at the easel intent on painting.

Beyond any thought formulated and that can be formulated, it is certain that the size of the painting immediately suggests a work intended to be displayed, but certainly, before 1917, it was seen by a very limited number of people.

It may have happened that, after designing the painting, the interruption of the sittings, due to Laure's departure for Naples because of her father's death, led the young painter, who had a special emotional bond with his grandfather, to place that portrait at the center of the canvas, and with a "play of mirrors" multiplied the meanings of the painting well beyond its official title. And that this emotional involvement between the artist and the painting was the reason for the work's prolonged stay in the painter's studio.

It should also be noted that, in addition to that of Telemaco Signorini, there is further evidence of Degas' mastery of the Italian language; this even comes to us from Paul Gauguin who, as many sources recall, said that Degas: “… preferred the company of Italian painters such as Boldini, Zandomeneghi, De Nittis, to that of the good French Impressionist painters.”

Even more colorful and charming is the testimony provided by the members of the “Club dei Polentoni,” an association founded by Italians in Paris that brought together lovers of that food as well as opera music enthusiasts; this group included numerous French artists and writers such as Degas, Zola, and the Goncourt brothers. In the reports of some official meetings of these devotees, centered around polenta and musical opera conversations, Degas’s lively participation in the gatherings is mentioned, to the point that he would sing not only Italian arias but also Neapolitan songs in the Neapolitan language, which he had certainly learned during his many stays in the Bourbon capital with his family of origin.

Edgar Degas, a great exponent of painting of all time, had Italian blood in his veins, therefore we Italians can understand his Art more deeply and have one more reason to love and admire him.

Florence, 20 April 2017 Emanuela Catalano

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