ID: 901002046 Page link: http://vocab.getty.edu/page/ia/901002046	Record Type: Character/Person

	Pierrot (Commedia dell'arte character)

Note: Stock character of the Italian commedia dell’arte, attributes are a costume consisting of a white jacket with a neck ruff and large buttons down the front, loose trousers, and a hat with a wide, floppy brim. Unlike most of the other stock characters, he played without a mask, his face whitened with powder. He is a simpleminded and honest servant, usually a young and personable valet. One of the comic servants, or zanni, Pedrolino functioned in the commedia as an unsuccessful lover and a victim of the pranks of his fellow comedians. Became tremendously popular in later French pantomimes as the naive and appealing Pierrot. For 20 years at the Théâtre des Funambules, the great French mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau (1796–1846) played Pierrot as the pathetic, white-robed lover eternally mooning over the beautiful Columbine. The clown hero of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera I pagliacci (1892) was a later use of a Pierrot-like figure.

Names:

	Pierrot (Commedia dell'arte character) (preferred,French-P,D)
	Pierrot (Commedia dell'arte character) (English-P,D)
	Pedrolino (Commedia dell'arte character) (Italian-P,D)

Hierarchical Position:

		Literature and Performing Arts (P)
		....<Literary characters> (P)
		........Commedia dell’arte characters (Italian theatrical characters) (I)
		............Pierrot (Commedia dell'arte character) (P)

Other Relationships:

	role/characteristic is .... character (person by activity)
	.....(people by activity, people (agents), People (hierarchy name)) (AAT)

	topic is .... commedia dell'arte
	.....(comedy (general genre), genres in literature and performing arts, concepts in the arts and humanities, Associated Concepts (hierarchy name)) (AAT)

Sources:

	Pierrot (Commedia dell'arte character)
	................Encyclopedia Britannica Online (2002-)
	................J. Paul Getty Museum, collections online (2000-)
	Pedrolino (Commedia dell'arte character)
	................Encyclopedia Britannica Online (2002-)
	................ICCD database (1988-)

Iconography Record Sources:

	................ Encyclopedia Britannica Online (2002-) accessed 20 March 2018
	................ J. Paul Getty Museum, collections online (2000-) http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/258873/jean-antoine-watteau-the-italian-comedians-french-about-1720/?dz=0.5000,0.6865,0.41