Jean-Baptiste Greuze - The broken pitcher

Title: The broken pitcher (La cruche cassée)
Artist: Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)
Date: 1772
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 109 × 87 cm

"The broken pitcher” represents a young girl carrying roses in her dress and a broken pitcher on her arm. She stands in front of a fountain shaped as a lion with a man’s face from which water is flowing.

The girl is very young and her features look so pure. Yet her rumpled clothes, her exposed breast, the lion and the broken pitcher suggest she has just lost her virginity.