Italienne (Gaëta)
1856/57
Medium
Graphite, with stumping, on blue wove paper with blue fibers, perimeter-mounted on cream wove paper wrapped around millboard (touch of red chalk)
Dimensions
45.6 × 31 cm (18 × 12 1/4 in.)
Classification
prints and drawing
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
185806
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The young woman who posed for this study probably came from Mola di Gaëta, now known as Formia, a small town in southern Italy. Her heavy dress, with its wide, embroidered sleeves, was typical of the locals. Degas traveled considerably in the vicinity of Rome and Naples in about 1856–59 while, under the sponsorship of the French state, he was a resident at the Villa Medici. Artists slightly senior to Degas had made their name with this kind of imagery, as rural Italian subjects were popular with...
About the Artist
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas · 1834–1917
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, born on July 19, 1834, in Paris to a prosperous banking family, was the eldest of five children. His mother, Célestine Musson, a Creole from New Orleans whose father Germain Musson had roots in Haiti, died when Degas was thirteen, leaving his father Augustin and unmarried uncles to guide him. Educated at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he earned a baccalauréat in...