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Jean-Baptiste Greuze | Broken Eggs, 1756

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Broken Eggs attracted favorable comment when exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1757.
One critic noted that the young serving girl had a noble pose worthy of a history painter.
The canvas was painted in Rome, but the principal source may have been a seventeenth-century Dutch work by Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681) - State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, which Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French painter, 1725-1805) would have known from an engraving.
The broken eggs symbolize the loss of the girl's virginity. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art


Jean-Baptiste-Greuze | Boy with a Broken Egg, 1756

Frans van Mieris (Dutch painter, 1635-1681) | The Broken Egg, 1655-1657 | Hermitage Museum













Anche se questo dipinto venne eseguito a Roma e presenta ambiente e costumi italiani, la fonte del soggetto ritratto è un quadro olandese del Seicento dell’artista Frans van Mieris il Vecchio (1635-1681), Le uova rotte (Museo dell’Ermitage, San Pietroburgo), che l'artista francese Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) conosceva attraverso un’ incisione.
Le uova rotte simboleggiano la perdita della verginità.
Il bambino che cerca di ricomporre le uova rappresenta l’ignara innocenza dell’infanzia.
Il quadro suscitò una reazione favorevole quando fu esibito al Salon di Parigi nel 1757. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art