Pierrot, also retrospectively known asGilles, is anoil on canvas painting ofc. 1718-1719 by the French Rococo artistJean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Completed in the later phase of Watteau's career,Pierrot measures 184.5 by 149.5 cm, which makes up somewhat unusual case in the artist's body of work. The painting depicts a number of actors portrayingcommedia dell'arte character types, with one as thetitular character set in the foreground.
By the early 19th century,Pierrot belonged toDominique Vivant, Baron Denon, the first director of the Louvre Museum; it later passed to the Parisian physicianLouis La Caze, who bequeathed his sprawling art collection to theLouvre in 1869.[1]
Vidal, Mary (1992).Watteau's Painted Conversations: Art, Literature, and Talk in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.ISBN0-300-05480-7.OCLC260176725.
