The Italian Comedians

The Italian Comedians, painted in 1720 and now in the National Gallery Washington, is Watteau's most explicit engagement with the Commedia dell'Arte tradition that pervades his work. The theatrical company poses as if for a curtain call — Pierrot at center, flanked by Harlequin, Columbine, and the other stock characters — creating an image that is simultaneously a theatrical portrait and a meditation on the relationship between performance and reality. Watteau's sympathy for the Commedia troupe, who were expelled from Paris by royal decree in 1697 and only returned in 1716, was personal as well as artistic: he identified with performers, outsiders whose art consisted of giving pleasure to audiences that did not necessarily respect them.

The theatrical characters are arranged in a frieze-like composition, their costumes rendered with Watteau's characteristic brilliance of color and texture. The interplay of theatrical masks and human emotion creates an ambiguous mood between comedy and pathos.