Word: chastel
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...airless painted space, filled with large twisting bodies based on Michelangelo's figura serpentinata; the strained and tangled poses; the weird color, by turns opulent and acidly dry; the Biblical and classical allegories, recondite to the point of eccentricity. "A courtly art," observed Art Historian André Chastel, "always tends to develop a universe from which nature is absent"-and Mannerism was the courtliest and most artificial of styles. At Fontainebleau, the world of nature and the spontaneous passions was sublimated-in art as, one presumes, in life-into an elaborate system of symbols...
...greatest paintings in the Western world," wrote Critic Pierre Schneider. "After the great Christ paintings of the Renaissance, this is the first nonreligious painting of an expiatory personage, a self-sacrifice figure." Adds Critic Andre Chastel, "Gilles has a poetic charm akin to Shakespeare. In fact, every time I look at it, I am reminded of Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream...
Rivals in Pleasure. That Gilles should remind Chastel of Bottom is no surprise, for both play essentially the same comic role. In the commedia dell' arte farces so popular in Watteau's day, Gilles, or Pierrot, was the simple-wilted country bumpkin, often a servant who pointed out the follies of his master and for his audacity got his ears boxed. But Watteau's dignified, wistful figure is aimed not at burlesque. In all probability it was intended as a portrait of a patron or friend...
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