Getty Museum
Scene from the Italian Comedy (recto); Figure Study (verso)
Creator
Claude GillotFrench Artist · 1673–1722
All works by this person →Claude Gillot was instrumental in putting the wit back into French art. With novel subject matter and a spontaneous decorative style, Gillot foreshadowed the Rococo and helped to free French painting from the academic conventions imposed by Charles LeBrun. Moreover, Gillot pursued his career in the margins, beyond court taste and royal patronage, maintaining individualism and reviving the sly spir
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1700
- Medium
- Pen and black ink, brush with reddish wash, brown ink framing lines (recto); pen and black ink (verso)
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 3f732eb6-0053-454a-ac9f-6cad2d7fca7d
From the Getty Museum record
Figures appear to stand on a stage, while a masked Harlequin, the *commedia dell'arte's* leading character, sits at a table and lures a fashionable young lady into prostitution. As the young woman holds the doctor's hand, a young man across the room stares with a displeased expression. Other *commedia dell'arte* characters, the merchant Pantaloon and Mezzetin in his floppy hat, lend Harlequin their support. Claude Gillot made this drawing as a design for an engraving in a book about one of his favorite subjects, the *commedia dell'arte*, a popular entertainment born in Italy and later embraced by the French. In the book, Gabriel Huquier's *Théâtre italien*, the scene is identified as "*Arlequin grapignant*," or "Harlequin as Procurer." The drawing is characteristic of *commedia dell'arte's* tendency to satirize human folly and pretense. Gillot's dashing, shorthand penwork and the luminous red wash imbue the drawing with a lightheartedness that conveys the comical mood of action onstage.
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