Maria Ines Aliverti_The Miniatures of Jean Louis ... - Acting Archives

AAR Acting Archives Essays Supplement 10 – April 2011
To modern eyes these costumes might seem extravagant or even ridiculous, but at
the time they must have been extremely important, due precisely to the coherent
attempt to render specific historical contexts. 67
Although important, these observations do not fully exhaust the question of the
documentary value of the vignettes. This depends, in fact, not only on the
faithfulness of the costumes depicted to the originals, but also on aspects related to
the interpretation of the actors, rendered explicit in the choice of a precise moment
of the performance, in the lines, which are often indicated, in the movements and the
gestures of the speakers, in their expressions, rendered with individual detail, and
finally in the spatial and proxemic relations. Although essential – they are, after all,
only actors in costume performing in an empty space – these images reflect a precise
aim to record the jeu of the actor.
How? And, first of all, how and why did they become established, these little
representations of the stage? What examples inspired Faesch, and perhaps also
Lekain, who might have been his first patron together with Preville and Monnet?
What method was used, at least initially, to portray the actors?
Almost all these images present silhouettes in profile; one might happily say all of
them, in fact, for even in the rare cases in which the bodies are shown in slight threequarter
profile, the faces are always drawn in full profile. There are at least two
reasons behind this choice, aesthetic and technical: that is the theatrical quality and
the faithfulness of the “shot”, to use a photographic term that will prove to be highly
appropriate for the case in question.
The tradition of costume figures does not seem to provide relevant precedents in
this respect: in fact these almost always presented their fictional costumed
performers frontally. Representation in profile is not equally important for costumes,
unless it is deemed necessary to highlight various aspects: the volume or the
additional elements of cloth, the relationship between the outfit and the body and the
gesture of the actor at a precise moment, the distance between one actor and
another, considering the size of their costumes. This was also the opinion of Claude
Gillot, who drew two impressionistic sketches of Baron as he performed with
another actor: in this case, too, which in my opinion shows a significant change in
the way of observing the actor on stage, the artist seems to favour full profile. 68
Representation in profile also undoubtedly highlighted the need for actors to be
completely absorbed in the scene they were performing, both alone and in dialogue
with a fellow actor, without all the “distractions” or pleasant “digressions” that
theatrical anecdotes narrate and that the eighteenth-century treatises on the reform of
the theatre look on with scorn, at times vaguely tinged (as in the case of the Paradoxe)
67 The reference here is to the attention Lekain paid to theatrical costume. ‘Non moins familiarisé avec
le dessin qu’avec les lettres, Lekain traçait lui-même ses costumes, conformément aux renseignements
qu’il devait à ses recherches. C’est lui qui a établi dans cet important accessoire une vérité qu’avant lui
on ne connaissait pas, et qu’il ne modifiait que pour lui donner plus de dignité. C’est lui qui substitua à
la friperie burlesque, dont les héros de l’antiquité s’affublaient sur notre théâtre, des habits appropriés
aux temps et aux mœurs auxquels appartenait l’action représentée’. [A. V. Arnault], Les Souvenirs et les
regrets (1861), pp. 20-21.
68 The two drawings in red chalk (sanguine), attributed to Claude Gillot; represent scenes from
Racine’s Athalie (British Museum, 1937, 3.22.1) and from Corneille’s Horace (London, Private
Collection). See Denis Sutton, ‘On two drawings by Claude Gillot’, The Burlington Magazine, 96, no. 614
(May, 1954); M. I. Aliverti, Il ritratto d’attore, pp. 103-105.
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