Polichinelle

This aged, clownish military officer is Polichinelle, most-commonly known to English-speaking audiences from the raucous Punch & Judy puppet shows in which the characters whack each other with sticks. He grew out of a long theatrical tradition called the Commedia dell’Arte, which attracted the attention of generations of artists for its lively—often bawdy—action, flamboyant costumes, and revealing truths. When Édouard Manet saw that most of his work had been rejected by the jury of the 1874 Paris salon exhibition, he decided to promote himself by giving away thousands of impressions of this print. Unfortunately, the police banned its publication, thinking Polichinelle was a caricature of France’s newly-elected president, a general who had used brutal force to crush public protests three years earlier. How telling that they saw their pompous leader in the image and feared that he was so weak that it could undermine his authority.