Focus on this artwork and explore the abstract.
Broken Eggs is a painting executed in 1756 by French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Done in oil on canvas, the painting depicts an old woman rebuking a young man who is responsible for having broken the eggs in the basket of a servant girl who sits dejectedly on the floor. It is the first of many paintings by Greuze in which he uses broken objects as a metaphor for the loss of a young girl's virginity. Greuze exhibited the work in the Salon of 1757 with an explanatory title: Une Mère grondant un jeune Homme pour avoir renversé un Panier d’Oeufs que sa Servante apportoit du Marché. Un Enfant tente de raccomoder un oeuf cassé ("A mother scolding a young man for having overturned a basket of eggs that her servant brought from the market. A child attempts to repair a broken egg").It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which acquired it in 1920.
Salon Metropolitan Museum of Art Jean-Baptiste Greuze