Love in the Italian Theatre

For almost 20 years there had been no Italian theatre in Paris. In 1697 Louis XIV threw the Italian players out of the city, angry at a comedy taken to mock his devout second wife, and the commedia troupes stayed banished as long as the old king lived. He died in 1715. Within a year the Regent, ruling in place of the child king, invited the Italians back, and Paris had its masked comedians again. Watteau painted this small night scene in 1716, just as they returned. A single torch lights a clearing in the trees, held up by a player dressed in white, the familiar masked characters of the Italian stage gathered around him in the dark. He made a daytime companion to it for the French theatre. Watteau himself had only a few years left. He was already ill and would die of consumption in 1721, not yet 40.