# Actors from the Comédie Française [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [WATTEAU, Antoine]() - Date: 1701-1750 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 57 x 73 cm ## Commentary Actors from the Comédie Française c. 1720 Oil on canvas, 57 x 73 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Until the end of the seventeenth century the theater of the great tragic playwrights and of Molière inspired painters little or not at all, apart from illustrated editions. Change occurred when Claude Gillot and his pupil Antoine Watteau drew a great deal on 'commedia del'arte' characters, which had been familiar to the French public for a century, though mainly on a burlesque level. The Italian Commedia dell'Arte troupe, which had been banned in 1697, was reestablished in 1716. Watteau's Actors from the Comédie Française, a light, silvery canvas, gives an idea of their theatrical costumes and gestures. ## Related artworks - [A Halt During the Chase]() - [A Seated Woman]() - [Actors of the Comédie-Française]() - [An Embarrassing Proposal \(detail\)]() - [An Embarrassing Proposal]() - [Back of Woman]() - [Cajoler]() - [Ceres \(Summer\)]() - [Chinese Musician and Chinese Woman]() - [Chinese Woman of Kouei Tchéou]() - [Diana at her Bath]() - [Faun]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()