Arlequim Apaixonado /
Harlequin in Love

Pierrot fights with Harlequin for the love of Colombina... Or is it? In a masquerade, Harlequin and Colombina dress as each other so that he can go with Pierrot. Maybe Colombina is not the one he truly loves...

Bilingual illustration self-published book (Portuguese and English)
with a twist on commedia dell'arte characters. 32 pages, 2024.

Commedia dell'arte was a type of Italian theater that, through travelling troupes, became popular in Europe during the 16th to 18th centuries. Usually performed in the street, it was known for its exagerated and comical performances, improvisation, pantomime, music and acrobacy, with stories of amorous intrigue and parody of social costumes. The focus was so much on the actors' improvisation that the characters could speak in different dialects or even languages and the scripts were many times just a description of the situation.

This genre of theater has disappeared, but its influences can still be felt today, for example in the works of Molière and Shakespeare, in european puppet theater (such as Teatro de Robertos in Portugal), in French pantomime, in the illustrations of George Barbier and other early 20th century artists and, of course, in the characters of Harlequin, Pierrot and Colombina which have reached us in a love triangle.

In this book I wanted to play with the love triangle, with the mistakes and visual elements of the commedia, but also with the possibilities of design and illustration of a bilingual book. In the following pages are some concepts and process of the book. If anything in this story doesn't make sense, we can consider it is in the spirit of its original influence.