767 - after Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Broken Pitcher, Portrait of a Young Woman in White, Oval Image

after Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Broken Pitcher, Portrait of a Young Woman in White, Oval Image Oil on canvas, unsigned, 19th century, copy after the painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze in the Louvre, young woman in a white dress with wide sleeves, transparent neckerchief and pink rose at the bodice, roses in the gathered-up skirt, on the right arm the broken pitcher, on the right a fountain with green lion's head and jet of water on a stone base, dark grey ground, oval image field in a gold-coloured frame inlay, age-appropriate condition, craquelure, partly rubbed, image 61x53 cm (HxW), framed, frame chipped, frame width 9 cm Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725 Tournus to 1805 Paris), genre and portrait painter, founded around the middle of the 18th century the fashion for sentimental and moralising genre pictures and was promoted by Diderot. His painting La Cruche cassée (The Broken Pitcher), painted in 1771 to 1772 in oval format, belonged to the Comtesse du Barry and came to the Louvre after the Revolution. The broken pitcher is regarded as a symbol of lost innocence; the roses in the lap and the lion's-head fountain belong to the imagery of this reading. Reproductive engravings by Massard (1773), Desvachez and Lévy (1878) spread the composition, after which numerous painted copies after the Old Master were made in the 19th century; this portrait of a girl is at the same time a Rococo genre picture with a moral reading.