Degas e Desboutin davanti La Celestine In this etching made by Picasso in 1968 to illustrate the story attributed to Fernando de Rojas and first published in 1499 in Burgos, Spain, Degas and his friend and companion Marcellin Desboutin, an inseparable couple in the heroic days of Impressionism, are ironically represented. Tall and slender Degas, small and ruddy the ingenious Desboutin, are portrayed in profile inside a closed house, with arabesque features, as they are negotiating with the mezzanine, the Celestine. The two figures, in their antitheticality, certainly inspired the ironic and grotesque side of Picasso, who well remembered them, having known and frequented them in his early years in Paris.