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March 24, 2010
Katherine Baetjer, ed. Watteau, Music, and Theater Exh. cat. New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2009. 176 pp.; 75 color ills.; 10 b/w ills. Cloth $35.00 (9780300155075)

Exhibition schedule: Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 22–November 29, 2009

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CrossRef DOI: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2010.33

Large
Jean-Antoine Watteau. Mezzetin (Mezetin) (probably 1718–20). Oil on canvas. 21 ¾ x 17 in. (55.2 x 43.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Munsey Fund, 1934 (34.13).

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art is ideally suited for an exhibition devoted to the theme of “Watteau, Music, and Theater” because two of Watteau’s most incisive treatments of these themes reside in its collection: the solitary singer Mezzetin (ca. 1718–20) and the tragic-comic French Comedians (ca. 1720–21). Both works also display Watteau’s ineffable fusion of performance and humanity, artifice and nature, and gestures both rote and heartfelt. The exhibition, rich in drawings as well as...