Pierrot, also retrospectively known as Gilles, is an
oil on canvas painting of
c. 1718-1719 by the French Rococo artist
Jean-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 portraying commedia dell'arte character types, with one as the
titular character set in the foreground.
By the early 19th century, Pierrot belonged to
Dominique Vivant, Baron Denon, the first director of the Louvre Museum; it later passed to the Parisian physician
Louis La Caze, who had his collection bequeathed to the
Louvre 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.