Pierrot

The figure of Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and commedia dell’arte, whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players who performed in Paris.

His character in contemporary popular culture is that of the sad clown, often pining for the 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 with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim and, more rarely, with a conical shape like a dunce's cap.