Page of Mezzetin by WATTEAU, Jean-Antoine in the Web Gallery of Art, a searchable image collection and database of European paintings and sculptures (1100-1850)

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Mezzetin

1717-19
Oil on canvas, 55,2 x 43,2 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Mezzetin, a stock character of the commedia dell'arte, the improvisational theater form of Italian origin, was an amorous valet who frequently engaged in the pursuit of unrequited love. Here he is shown playing the guitar before a garden in which a young woman - perhaps a statue, perhaps the painting of a statue on a stage set - stands with her back turned, presumably rejecting his romantic entreaties. Such complex layering of multiple realities was one of Watteau's preoccupations. He delighted in the depiction of scenes imbued with the ambiguous relationship that existed between stage life and real life - the world of art and the actual world.