The Bellelli Family
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Bellelli Family, also known as Family Portrait, is an oil painting on canvas by Edgar Degas (1834–1917), painted ca. 1858–1867. A masterwork of Degas' youth, the painting is a portrait of his aunt, her husband, and their two young daughters. It is in the Musée d'Orsay.
Composition and content
The work of many artists provided inspiration: at this time Degas included in his correspondence mention of Anthony van Dyck, Giorgione, and Botticelli, among others. Other prototypes whose influence have been cited, particularly in terms of composition, include 17th century Dutch genre and portrait painting, the portrait studies of Ingres, Velázquez's Las Meninas, the portraits of Hans Holbein, the Family of Charles IV by Francisco Goya, Gustave Courbet's After Dinner at Ornans, and a lithograph by Honore Daumier entitled A Man of Property. As in Las Meninas, a picture, mirror, and doorway are used to expand the space of the interior.
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, 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 the divided loyalties of their children. 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; 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. 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.
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."
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. 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. 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.
The unease of The Bellelli Family was not an anomaly, nor were such tensions revealed solely through the study of portraiture; in fact, alienation and hostility 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 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.
