Seventy-five is Pulecenella. Of the ninety figures he is the only invented character: everything else on the board is a person you could meet, an object you could hold or a thing that could happen to you.
The mask as it is now known was created at Acerra, just outside Naples, by the Capuan actor Silvio Fiorillo in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Fiorillo's own Pulcinella wore a bicorn hat and a beard; the white smock and the sugar-loaf hat everyone pictures were designed in the nineteenth century by the actor Antonio Petito. The earliest text is Fiorillo's La Lucilla costante con le ridicole disfide e prodezze di Policinella, written in 1609 and printed in 1632 after his death.
- 75
- Pulecenella
- Pulcinella
- Row 71–80 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
The number carries no recorded reason. The figure's own history is unusually well documented for this board, and worth having in full because most of the squares have nothing.
Other things filed on 75
In Neapolitan life
Where Pulcinella came from before Fiorillo is genuinely disputed. One account derives the name from pulcino, a chick, after the hooked nose. Another names a real Acerra peasant, Puccio d'Aniello, who joined a travelling company as a clown. The classical archaeologist Margarete Bieber traced the type back to fourth-century BC Greek farce. None of these is settled, and the disagreement is older than the smorfia.
75 in the smorfia — frequently asked
The mask in its recognisable form is credited to Silvio Fiorillo at Acerra in the early 1600s; the modern costume was designed by Antonio Petito in the nineteenth century. Where the character came from before that is disputed.
No source explains the number. He is the only fictional figure among the ninety, which suggests the compilers thought of him as a Neapolitan you might actually run into.