Edgar Degas. The Bellelli Family. From the Collection of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Masterpieces from the World's Museums in the Hermitage series

On 1 November 2006 an exhibition opened in the Winter Palace (Room 334) which has been organized by the State Hermitage together with the Musee d'Orsay, Paris, with support from the Ministry of Culture of the French Republic.

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. 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. The master's early work was in the portrait genre, but unlike other canvases by him dating from the 1850s - 1860s, here the artist set for himself the very complex task of a life-size group portrait. From the moment he began working on The Bellelli Family, Degas emphasized that he was creating precisely a painting, that is, something more than just a reproduction of the external appearance of these or others of his contemporaries.

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 it with the artistic investigations and insights which came following Impressionism, from Seurat to early Mondrian.

The curator of the exhibition is A. G. Kostenevich, chief researcher of the Department of Western European Fine Art in the State Hermitage and doctor of art history. The State Hermitage Publishing House has issued a booklet for the exhibition written by Dr. Kostenevich.

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Booklet for the exhibition "Degas. The Bellelli Family"
Dr. Albert Kostenevich
State Hermitage Publishing House

At the opening of the exhibition

At the exhibition