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Commedia dell arte in france

EARLY P AINTINGS OF THE COMMEDIA DELL' ARTE IN FRANCE BY CHARLES STERLING Senior Research Fellow Department of Paintings Among the many interesting paintings the Metropolitan Museum has recently had the good fortune to receive as loans from Mrs Payne Whitney there is one that is not only entertaining but also somewhat puzzling ' It shows a pair of young lovers The man is paying court to the woman by putting his arms tenderly round her and she shows her satisfac- tion in a rather surprising way pressing his little ?nger with the ?nger and thumb of her right hand at the same time she holds in her left hand a pair of spectacles which she seems to have just taken o ? or to be o ?ering to some one Her intent and mischievous eye seeks ours as if to tell us the hidden meaning of her two apparently diverse actions lest we see in them only thoughtless feminine inconse- quence the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing The lovers are dressed in a rather strange style and one suspects a fanciful version of mediaeval costume some- what like that worn in Burgundy at the beginning of the ?fteenth century Fortunately it has been possible to clear up all this mystery In the Cabinet des Estampes in the Bibliotheque Nationale there are two engravings very much like our picture one of them anonymous the other in reverse signed P Perret sc and Le Blond excude illustrated on the following pages The lovers are exactly the same in these prints as in the painting except for a very slight di ?erence in the position of the hand that holds the spectacles but they have facing them a disconsolate old man to whom the lady is presenting this symbol of old age Immediately the enigma of our painting is solved it is a copy of the anonymous engraving we have only the left half of the picture the right half showing the old man has been cut o ? perhaps because of damage perhaps because the indiscreet witness was thought to lessen the sale value of the young lovers When we look carefully at the canvas we see that the old frame mark is on three sides only proving that the right side was not framed until recently We can also see near the spectacles the outline of the old man's coat just as it appears in the engravings The meaning of the scene is now clear it is following the vigorous paganism of the Renaissance both a commendation of young love and a satire on the unseemly ardors of love in old age A legend in French on the prints followed in the anonymous one by a German translation develops this idea not without wit and a certain charm of orthography Here is the text Voiez ce viel penard enulope dans sa mante Les bras croisez gemir ce quil veut et ne peut La belle gentiment