Antonio Casartelli, Costume Clown
White clown costume, first half of the 1900s. Completely decorated with sequins and beads forming dragon designs on the front and back cm 75(shoulders)x100h Manichino early 1900 (100-250 euros), Antonio Casartelli, aka Paolino founded with his brother-in-law Zè-Zè (Fernando Giachi, of the Tuscan clowns and acrobats dynasty) the Duo Giachi, active from 1919 to 1939, which expanded after the war, including their children and becoming the 4 Giachi. A comic couple, never vulgar, who knew how to involve the public with jokes, games, somersaults and acrobatics, so much so that the famous duo was contended for by some of the most important European circuses of the time, such as the Krone Circus, the Togni Circus, the Medrano Circus and many others. Often the clown is portrayed only as the funny and messy mask, with oversized clothes, and you forget about his shoulder, the white clown, the serious one, who fixes situations and makes even more ridiculous the misdeeds of his partner. But the figure of the white clown is fundamental in the circus arts and in the numbers of clowns: it represents the elegance and beauty of the world, the order of things, the reasonableness of adulthood; it encapsulates the poetry and delicacy of measured gestures, as opposed to the striking and childish gestures of Augustus; it is he, in the couple, who raises the level of comedy, reaching the parents sitting in the stands of the tent, to make them become children again. The white clown is one of the figures that best represent the circus itself, embracing the public all around and staging, with his refined and refined elegance, the magical daydream of the representation and presentation of reality on the round and colourful track.