From October sixteenth, 2024 to February third, 2025, the Louvre Museum presents an exhibition centered on Antoine Watteau’s enigmatic “Pierrot (Gilles)”
Supply: Louvre · Picture: Antoine Watteau, “Pierrot (Gilles)” (element). Paris, Louvre
“The enigmatic painting of the Louvre par excellence.”: That is how painter and author Bernard Dufour described Pierrot, lengthy often known as Gilles, by Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Past the acquainted and iconic determine of this unusual character wearing white, the portray is certainly one among absolute uniqueness. Every thing about it, from its historical past to its composition, together with its iconography and format, intrigues and questions.
The origins of the canvas stay utterly unknown, and its first sure point out dates solely to 1826. The interpretation of the portray, impressed by the world of theater and notably by Pierrot, essentially the most well-known comedic character of the time, additionally stays advanced.
Due to the restoration by the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF) that has simply returned the portray to its full splendor, the Louvre museum is dedicating an exhibition to it, which is the monograph it deserved. The exhibition examines this mysterious masterpiece by inserting it within the context of early 18th-century theatrical life and in relation to the works of Watteau and his contemporaries.
Not forgetting to discover the fixed and fruitful fascination that Gilles has exerted as much as in the present day on creators from all horizons, from Fragonard to Picasso, together with Nadar, Derain, or Marcel Carné: painters, writers, actors, photographers, or filmmakers – every has, with expertise, tried to unravel its charming enigma.
The exhibition brings collectively sixty-five works (work, drawings, engravings, books, images, and movie excerpts), together with seven work by Watteau, because of the help of quite a few French, European, and American museums, such because the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Wallace Assortment, and the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in Washington.
An everlasting clean web page, regardless of its numerous interpretations, Pierrot stays a comic with out a line and a portray the ultimate.
