Fiesta veneciana

A woman in shimmering silk and a man in a comic costume dance a minuet in a park, while the painter himself sits nearby with a musette. Watteau makes taffeta, water and leaves all seem to breathe the same air.

The story behind the painting

Watteau painted the picture in 1719, two years before his death. Its title is not his: it comes from an engraving of 1732 by Laurent Cars, and refers to the Venetian styles of dress and dancing shown in the scene, the dress inspired by the commedia dell'arte. The canvas is about 56 by 46 cm. It was bequeathed in 1861 to what is now the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh by Lady Murray of Henderland, widow of John Murray, Lord Murray.

What to look for

In the centre a woman and a man in a black hat dance a minuet. Behind them sits a whole group: a cavalier courting a lady, two ladies talking to an actor, and a seated musician holding a kind of bagpipe called a musette. Further back, another couple stands in front of a fountain. Notice how Watteau treats different materials in the same way, taffeta and water, people and statues, foliage and curls, which gives the whole painting its unity and its soft, dreamlike glow.

Meaning and intent

The painting belongs to the fêtes galantes, the genre Watteau created. The central dancer was claimed by Michael Levey, but never proven, to be Charlotte Desmares, a Comédie-Française actress and mistress of the Duke of Orleans. The man in the black hat has been identified as the Flemish painter Nicolas Vleughels, Watteau's friend. The musician is presumed to be a self-portrait. Since the Middle Ages the bagpipe had carried sexual symbolism, as in Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, adding a sly note to the elegant scene.

Legacy

Vleughels, the friend who may dance in the picture, later rose to become director of the Academy of Rome from 1725 to 1736. His humorous costume, perhaps inspired by Italian comedians, may explain the title Laurent Cars chose for his engraving. Through that print the painting gained the name it still carries. Today it hangs in Edinburgh, a small canvas where real friends, actors and the painter himself seem to meet in one imagined Venetian evening.