Pierrot Pierrot Pierrot (, ; ) is a stock character of pantomime and "commedia dell'arte" whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a diminutive of "Pierre" (Peter), via the suffix "-ot." His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse
Pierrot venue, the Folies-Nouvelles, which attracted the fashionable and artistic set, unlike the Funambules’ working-class children of paradise. Such an audience was not averse to pantomimic experiment, and at mid-century "experiment" very often meant Realism. (The pre-"Bovary" Gustave Flaubert wrote a pantomime for the Folies-Nouvelles, "Pierrot in the Seraglio" [1855], which was never produced.) Legrand often appeared in realistic costume, his chalky face his only concession to tradition, leading some advocates of pantomime, like Gautier, to lament that he was betraying the character of the type. But it was the Pierrot as conceived by Legrand that had the greatest influence on