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 The Naturalists—Émile Zola especially, who wrote glowingly of them—were captivated by their art. Edmond de Goncourt modeled his acrobat-mimes in his "The Zemganno Brothers" (1879) upon them; J.-K. Huysmans (whose "Against Nature" [1884] would become Dorian Gray's bible) and his friend Léon Hennique wrote their pantomime "" (1881) after seeing them perform at the Folies Bergère. (And, in turn, Jules Laforgue wrote his pantomime "Pierrot the Cut-Up" ["Pierrot fumiste", 1882] after reading the scenario by Huysmans and Hennique.) It was in part through the enthusiasm that they excited, coupled with the Impressionists’ taste for popular entertainment, like the circus and