Pierrot. Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and commedia dell'arte whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a diminutive of Pierre, via the suffix-ot.
His character in contemporary popular culture, in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall, is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons.
Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim, more rarely with a conical shape like a dunce's cap. But most frequently, since his reincarnation under Jean-Gaspard Deburau, he wears neither collar nor hat, only a black skullcap.
The defining characteristic of Pierrot is his naiveté: he is seen as a fool, often the butt of pranks, yet nonetheless trusting. It was a generally buffoonish Pierrot that held the European stage for the first two centuries of his history.
And yet early signs of a respectful, even sympathetic attitude toward the character appeared in the plays of Jean-François Regnard and in the paintings of Antoine Watteau, an attitude that would deepen in the nineteenth century, after
His character in contemporary popular culture, in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall, is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons.
Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim, more rarely with a conical shape like a dunce's cap. But most frequently, since his reincarnation under Jean-Gaspard Deburau, he wears neither collar nor hat, only a black skullcap.
The defining characteristic of Pierrot is his naiveté: he is seen as a fool, often the butt of pranks, yet nonetheless trusting. It was a generally buffoonish Pierrot that held the European stage for the first two centuries of his history.
And yet early signs of a respectful, even sympathetic attitude toward the character appeared in the plays of Jean-François Regnard and in the paintings of Antoine Watteau, an attitude that would deepen in the nineteenth century, after
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