GREUZE, Jean-Baptiste
(b. 1725, Tournus, d. 1805, Paris)

The Broken Pitcher

1771
Oil on canvas, 109 x 87 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

The painting shows a young girl at a well. One sees immediately that Greuze was concerned to convey eroticism in the Rococo manner, the badly proportioned lion of the well in the antique style being only a fashionable attribute.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 19 minutes):
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme