Pierrot [1883]; "The Painter Aman-Jean as Pierrot" [1883]), Léon Comerre ("Pierrot" [1884]), Henri Rousseau ("A Carnival Night" [1886]), Paul Cézanne ("Mardi gras [Pierrot and Harlequin]" [1888]), Fernand Pelez ("Grimaces and Miseries" a.k.a. "The Saltimbanques" [1888]), Pablo Picasso ("Pierrot and Columbine" [1900]), Guillaume Seignac ("Pierrot's Embrace" [1900]), and Édouard Vuillard ("The Black Pierrot" [c. 1890]). The mime "Tombre" of Jean Richepin's novel "Nice People" ("Braves Gens" [1886]) turned him into a pathetic and alcoholic "phantom"; Paul Verlaine imagined him as a gormandizing naïf in "Pantomime" (1869), then, like Tombre, as a lightning-lit specter in "Pierrot" (1868, pub. 1882). Laforgue put three of
Pierrot where he appears. Pierrot, on the other hand, as a "second" "zanni", is a static character in his earliest incarnations, "standing on the periphery of the action", dispensing advice that seems to him sage, and courting—unsuccessfully—his master's young daughter, Columbine, with bashfulness and indecision. His origins among the Italian players in France are most unambiguously traced to Molière's character, the lovelorn peasant Pierrot, in "Don Juan, or The Stone Guest" (1665). In 1673, probably inspired by Molière's success, the Comédie-Italienne made its own contribution to the Don Juan legend with an "Addendum to "The Stone Guest"", which included Molière's Pierrot.