Resumen de Dr Richard Mead and Watteau's 'Comédiens Italiens'
Jean de Julienne's Oeuvre grave de Watteau of 1735 included three engravings of paintings then located in England. The plates were engraved by the French artist Bernard Baron, who had moved to London in 1712 and perhaps met Watteau there in 1720.' One of the paintings, Les deux cousines, belonged to Baron himself while the other two were, as noted on the engravings, from the 'Cabinet du Dr Mead, Medicin du Roy de la grande Bretagne a Londre'. Although one of these, L'amour paisible (Fig.3), is now lost, the other picture, Les comediens italiens (Fig.4), figures prominently in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and has received considerable scholarly attention over the past century.
