The Commedia dell’Arte, was a form of improvised street theatre, which spread from16th-century Italy throughout Europe, and remained popular for around two centuries. Commedia dell'Arte troupes engaged in very physical acting using music, dance and acrobatics in their performances. While the plot was largely improvised, stock characters were used and were recognisable to the audience by their costumes, accents and poses. The popularity of this theatre form inspired paintings and decorative objects depicting the commedia characters.

From the late 1730s and into the 1740s the Meissen modeller Johann Joachim Kändler produced a great variety of expressive figures based on the Commedia dell’Arte characters. Pantalone’s typical pose and costume was established early in 17th-century Florence in an engraving by Callot, which went on to be copied by artists innumerable times over the next two hundred years. He is normally depicted wearing a hook-nosed mask and old fashioned Venetian merchant’s attire to accentuate his miserly nature. Kändler omits the mask but positions the figure in the forward-bending pose associated with the character.