Broken Eggs

Jean-Baptiste Greuze

1756 · Oil on canvas · European Paintings

In moralizing genre subjects such as this, Greuze bypassed the arcane subject matter of history painting to appeal to a broad public. At the Salon of 1757, a critic even declared that the pose of this young servant girl, whose loss of virginity is symbolized by the broken eggs, was worthy of a history painter. Greuze struck upon such subjects, based in part on seventeenth-century Dutch painting, while still a student in Rome, though he would spend the next decades stubbornly pursuing the official title of history painter.

Artist

Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Date

1756

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

Bequest of William K. Vanderbilt, 1920