Research Catalog

Title

Catherine Biancollelli dans le rôle de Colomline [i.e. Colombine] [graphic].

Publication

[182-?]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Moore, Lillian. dnr

Description

1 drawing : ink, watercolor, color; 32 x 20 cm.

Alternative Title

Catherine Biancollelli dans le rôle de Colombine

Subject

• Columbine (Fictitious character)
• Commedia dell'arte

Genre/Form

Portrait drawings.

Note

• Caption title.
• Caption: Comedie Italienne, Année 1730.
• Penciled on the verso: No. 34.
• For more information about Catherine Biancolelli, see: Radulescu, Domnica, "Caterina's Colombina: the birth of a female trickster in seventeenth-century France," Theatre journal, vol. 60, no. 1 (2007), p. 87-113.

Source (note)

• Lillian Moore.

Biography (note)

• The subject's last name appears variously as Biancolelli or Biancollelli, while her first name is given as Catherine, Caterina, Catarina, or Marie Catherine. Biancolelli, 1665-1716, was an actress, singer, and dancer of Italian descent, active in France. She was born into a theatrical family: her father was Domenico Biancolelli, a renowned Arlecchino or Harlequin, while her grandmother Isabella Franchini Biancolelli is said to have originated the role of Colombina or Columbine, the female trickster of the seventeenth-century commedia dell'arte. Catherine was the second to play that role, which she assumed upon her debut with the Comédie Italienne in 1685. She married the actor Pierre Lenoir de la Thorillière in 1685, and retired after the Comédie Italienne was expelled from Paris in 1697. The inscription "Année 1730" on this drawing is thus rather enigmatic, since that year postdates both Biancolelli's retirement and death, yet probably predates the year when the drawing was made.

Local note

• Cataloging funds provided by Friends of Jerome Robbins Dance Division.
• For the watercolor of Emilie Bigottini in Les pages du duc de Vendome, see: *MGZGA Anon Big 2.

Call Number

*MGZGD Anon Bia 1

OCLC

824566520

Title

Catherine Biancollelli dans le rôle de Colomline [i.e. Colombine] [graphic].

Imprint

[182-?]

Summary

Full-length portrait of the actress in costume. A similar image, though reversed, appears in an eighteenth-century engraving titled Catherine Biancollelli ditte Colombine, two examples of which are held by the Victoria & Albert Museum. Despite the similarity of details of her costume and headdress, however, the position of her right arm (left arm in the engraving) differs, as does the angle at which she holds her fan and the draping of her train. This drawing is stylistically similar, in image and lettering, to an uncredited drawing of dancer Emilie Bigottini in the trousers role of Victor in Jean Aumer's ballet Les pages du duc de Vendome. Probably painted around 1820, when the ballet first appeared, the portrait of Bigottini was later published as a lithograph.

Biography

The subject's last name appears variously as Biancolelli or Biancollelli, while her first name is given as Catherine, Caterina, Catarina, or Marie Catherine. Biancolelli, 1665-1716, was an actress, singer, and dancer of Italian descent, active in France. She was born into a theatrical family: her father was Domenico Biancolelli, a renowned Arlecchino or Harlequin, while her grandmother Isabella Franchini Biancolelli is said to have originated the role of Colombina or Columbine, the female trickster of the seventeenth-century commedia dell'arte. Catherine was the second to play that role, which she assumed upon her debut with the Comédie Italienne in 1685. She married the actor Pierre Lenoir de la Thorillière in 1685, and retired after the Comédie Italienne was expelled from Paris in 1697. The inscription "Année 1730" on this drawing is thus rather enigmatic, since that year postdates both Biancolelli's retirement and death, yet probably predates the year when the drawing was made.

Local Note

Cataloging funds provided by Friends of Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

For the watercolor of Emilie Bigottini in Les pages du duc de Vendome, see: *MGZGA Anon Big 2.

Source

Gift; Lillian Moore.

Added Author

Moore, Lillian. Donor

Research Call Number

*MGZGD Anon Bia 1