There was always a moment in Spike Milligan’s long-running TV comedy series Q when he liked to break the fourth wall. To end a sketch he would face the camera and declare he had run out of lines and didn’t know how to get off stage. His arms would slump by his side as if his puppet strings had been cut and, incapable of action without his script, he would forlornly declare “What do we do now?”.

Jean-Antoine Watteau created his enigmatic painting Pierrot in 1718/19, just three years after the death of the greatest puppet-master of them all, the Sun King, Louis the 14th. For more than 70 years Louis had been the sole arbiter of life in France. France was his stage; he wrote the script and directed his people. He built the finest stage set ever seen, the Palace of Versailles. Now he was no more. Pierrot stands, like Spike, with his puppet strings cut, waiting for direction. He speaks for France “What do we do now?”