Schauspieler der Comédie-Française

Watteau loved the Paris stage, and this small panel, only about 25 centimetres across, is really a set of theatre portraits. The Hermitage reading is that these are players of the Comedie-Francaise who appeared together in a popular comedy by the playwright Dancourt called The Three Cousins, a piece Watteau was fond of. Some of the faces carry names, an actor trained under Moliere himself, a young comic actress, a man in a beret who took the lead. Painted around 1711, when Watteau was just making his reputation, it slips between real people and stage characters so easily that over the years it was retitled again and again, at one point passed off as a scene from the Italian comedy instead.