Young Edgar Degas made over 700 copies of what?

Young Edgar Degas made over 700 copies of older works of art. These studies included Renaissance and Classical works by Italian and French masters, especially paintings he encountered in museums and collections.

Degas began registering as a copyist at the Louvre in 1853. He also spent much of 1856–1859 in Italy, visiting Florence, Rome, Naples, and other centers of art while studying works by earlier masters. Copying was regarded as serious artistic training: it sharpened an artist’s command of anatomy, composition, line, and color.

The copies were not simply attempts to imitate paintings for their own sake. Degas used them to understand how earlier artists solved visual problems, later adapting those lessons in portraits, history paintings, drawings, and pastels. He copied works associated with artists such as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Veronese, as well as French painters.

A common mix-up is to associate Degas’s hundreds of copies with his famous ballet subjects. Dancers became central to his mature work, but his early education was deeply rooted in Old Master art. His respect for the past remained visible even after he became associated with Impressionism.