Mezzetino (Watteau)

Mezzetin was a stock lover of the Italian comedy, and Watteau sits him in a garden, strumming a guitar, singing and gazing up toward a balcony we never see. Behind him a statue of Venus stands with her back turned, the cleanest visual joke about unrequited love in art. It is a small canvas, little more than half a meter tall, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it rewards close looking at the player's tense hands and upturned face. If you have ever sung for someone who was not listening, this is your painting.