Gaetano Bellei (1857–1922) was born in Modena on 22 January 1857 and died there on 20 March 1922. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Modena under Adeodato Malatesta, then went to Rome, where he studied at the Accademia di San Luca and at the French and Spanish academies, sharpening his command of the nude.
In the early 1880s he settled in Florence, on a scholarship for young artists. There he met the painter Gaetano Chierici and turned to genre painting: domestic scenes, small family dramas, old people and children. Florence was a fixed stop on the Grand Tour, and foreign visitors, above all English and Americans, bought such pictures eagerly. Bellei often repeated a successful composition in several versions.
He was also a capable portraitist and painted sacred subjects, among them an altarpiece of the Redeemer for the parish church in Zocca. He remained attached to Modena all his life. The Museo Civico there holds a large nude study of 1910, a gift from the painter himself.