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Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aid Antoine Watteau

in 1725 and published with a poem that began with the line “Voulez-vous Triompher des

Belles?”
5
• The poem on the bottom of the engraving reads (with a loose translation):

Voulez vous triompher des Belles? Do you wish to triumph over the beauties?
Debitez leur des bagatelles; Debate their trifles;

Parlez d’un ton fàcetieux; Speak in a facetious tone;

Et gardez vous bien au pres d'elles And keep yourself close to them
Dè prendre un masque serieux. To take a serious mask.

L'Amour demande qu'on l'amùse: Love asks that we have fun:
Il est enfant: toute la ruse, He is a child: all the cunning,

Pour luy plaire, est destre badin; To please him, is very funny;

Et souvent au Sage il refuse And often to the Sage he refuses

Tout ce qu'obtient un Arlequin. All that a Harlequin gets.

• In the foreground, the woman in the gown is thought to be Columbine, while next to her is
her lover, Harlequin, represented by the male figure in the black mask and colorful

diamond-patterned attire. Both characters are from the commedia dell’arte (comedy of art)

or comédie Italienne (Italian theater), a popular form of theater at the time that had been
outlawed in Paris in the late 17 century.
th
6,7
• Behind them is a lady seated and holding a music book, with a man sitting in front of her

holding a lute. The identity of the figures is not certain, though some have conjectured that

they are either actors (to go along with the theme of the commedia dell’arte) or a lady with

two suitors and their valets.
6,8

5 (Museum of New Zealand)
6 (The Wallace Collection)
7 (Milam)
8 (Crow)

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