Burattino

According to Pierre-Louis Duchartre, the puppet named Burattino became so popular in Italy, that "by the end of the sixteenth century, all marionettes operated by strings and a wire were called burattini, instead of bagatelli or fantoccini, as they had been known up to that time.

Duchartre also reproduces two illustrations from 1594 with Burattino, in which he wears a costume similar to Zani's but with a characteristic flat round hat.

Burattino is one of three commedia dell'arte masks mentioned by Bartolomeo Rossi in the foreword to his 1584 comic pastoral play Fiammella, as examples of low-life characters who speak the Bergamasque dialect (usually approximate), the other two being Pedrolino and Arlecchino.

As a rustic dialect, it signaled the character's low social status and was used in Italian theatre into the 18th century.

He appears as a house servant, an innkeeper, a gardener, a peasant, a beggar, and a long-lost father.