Porträt von Diego Martelli

In the spring of 1879 the Florentine critic Diego Martelli came to Paris to report on the Exposition Universelle, the great world's fair, and struck up a fast friendship with Degas. Martelli was a champion of new painting, first of the Macchiaioli, the Italian painters who worked in patches of light and shade, and soon one of the earliest Italians to write warmly about French Impressionism. Degas painted him seated at a cluttered work table and did something odd with the viewpoint: he looked down at his friend from above, so the round, bearded man seems to tip forward off his low stool. The papers, the slippers, the blue-covered table are all seen from that steep angle. Martelli sat only a few months before returning to Florence, and wrote fondly of the delightful hours he had spent in the painter's company.