Getty Museum

Scene from the Italian Comedy (recto); Figure Study (verso)

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

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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