Pierrot, Formerly Known as Gilles

A clown in a loose white satin costume stands full-length and alone, facing us with an awkward, blank, faintly sorrowful expression, his arms hanging useless at his sides, while other players from the Italian comedy lurk below. Watteau lifts a humble stage entertainer to the scale and gravity of a grand portrait, and the result is hauntingly enigmatic - dignity and absurdity, performance and loneliness held together at once. Now in the Louvre, the figure long called Gilles is among the most poignant in French art, a comedian caught in a moment of utter, exposed stillness.