The Italian Comedians

The Italian Comedians, painted in the last year of Antoine Watteau’s short life, gathers the stock figures of the commedia dell’arte — Pierrot in his loose white smock, Harlequin in motley, the Doctor and the Captain — into a farewell that has never been bettered. Watteau, the inventor of the fête galante and the most poetic painter of the Rococo, here turns the troupe’s antic energy toward stillness: the musicians strike up, the great golden curtain parts, and the company steps forward as if to take leave of the stage itself. The satin costumes in rose, blue and cream and the shifting light of the park set the scene between performance and reverie, a picture that moves even those who know nothing of the old comedy. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.