Three masked players
Three figures sit jammed together along a table in a shallow brown room, and they are made of the same flat shapes as a paper cut-out. Read them left to right. At the left, a player in a diamond-patterned costume — a Harlequin, the clown of old Italian comedy — holds a stringed instrument. In the center, a figure in white — a Pierrot, the sad-clown foil to the scheming Harlequin — raises a clarinet to a black domino mask (a half-mask covering just the eyes). At the right, a tall dark monk in a hooded robe holds a sheet of music, or perhaps an accordion.
Three details reward a closer look: the three flat, frontal masks, staring straight out with no expression you can name; the actual sheet music laid on the table, drawn with real staves and notes, a small window of legibility in a wall of color; and, if you hunt, the dim shape of a dog stretched beneath the table. It is a band, posed for a portrait — bright, festive, and somehow not quite alive.