This picture was painted in Rome, but despite the Italian costumes and setting, the source of the subject is a seventeenth-century Dutch painting by Frans van Mieris the Elder, The Broken Eggs (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), which Greuze knew through an engraving. The broken eggs symbolize the loss of virginity. The little boy trying to repair one of the eggs represents the uncomprehending innocence of childhood.

This picture attracted favorable comment when exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1757. One critic noted that the young girl had a pose so noble that she could embellish a history painting. Its pendant was The Neapolitan Gesture of 1757 (Worcester Art Museum) in which the same four models appear, but the seducer is foiled by the old woman.

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