Broken eggs - Greuze

1757 Salon booklet:  

"By Mr. Greuze, Accredited.  
Four paintings in Italian costume, two measuring 2 feet 3 inches by 2 feet 11 inches wide, and the other two measuring 1 foot 11 inches high by 1 foot 6 inches wide.  
112. A Mother scolding a young man for knocking over a basket of eggs that her servant was bringing back from the market. A child tries to mend a broken egg. "

The painting is described by Abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélémy to the Comte de Caylus in a letter dated May 12, 1756.
Fréron describes it in his review of the 1757 Salon for L'Année littéraire.

Placed on the barrel on which the child is leaning, a bow and arrow identify him, despite himself, as Cupid: this is the suggestive meaning of this conventional scene in which the broken eggs (like the dead bird or the broken mirror elsewhere) represent the young girl's lost virginity during her mother's absence. In the center, in the foreground, the basket, the eggs, and the straw hat constitute a preliminary still life for the eye, a sort of appetizer for the scene that is about to follow. The girl on the left, blushing with shame, has not bothered to adjust her clothes: her budding throat is visible and her bodice seems disarranged.