L'indifferente

Watteau painted this tiny panel, barely the size of a sheet of paper, around 1717, the year the Academy admitted him on the strength of his dreamy scenes of elegant company out of doors. A single young man in a silk cape steps forward on his toes, mid-gesture, as if caught in a dance. Its later life turned out stranger than its making. In 1939 a young admirer named Serge Bogousslavsky simply cut it from the wall of the Louvre in broad daylight, convinced parts of it had been clumsily repainted. He spent three weeks restoring it at home, scraping away a small toy he decided was not Watteau's, then telephoned the newspapers and gave it back. He went to prison, and the panel returned to its room.