Measuring 7 by 7.5 feet, "Family of Saltimbanques" is the most important painting Picasso made during his early career. Immediately obvious is the isolation and stillness of its figures. Shouldn’t these acrobats, dancers, and jesters suggest the frolic or at least the forced gaiety of circus performance?
That was not what Picasso had in mind.
For him, these wandering saltimbanques stood for the melancholy of the neglected underclass of artistes, a kind of extended family with whom he identified.