Head of a Young Woman

From September 1755 until April 1757 Greuze was in Italy, spending the greater part of his time in Rome. It is sometimes said that he was little influenced by what he saw, though he did make costume studies (see 1982.93.2) and drawings from the model. There is however a specific source of inspiration for the finely tuned emotional, not to say erotic, heads of women with their heads thrown back and lips parted. It may be found in a drawing (State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) that he based on the head of the saint from the marble group by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) of The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. And surely he must also have known the work of Guido Reni (1575–1642), whose female saints so often direct their gaze toward the heavens.

Our picture would have been studied from a professional model wearing a kind of elegant peasant costume rather than contemporary dress. If the sensibility the artist expressed when painting her is alien to modern taste, it should still be possible to admire the subtle play of the few colors, the use of red, the modeling of the thick white pigment of the blouse, and the transparency of the striped gray gauze veil. When writing about Greuze’s Salon exhibits in the 1760s, the critic Denis Diderot (1713–1784) once remarked that he could paint skin of an infinitely velvety softness.

Katharine Baetjer 2012

?Sir Anthony Rothschild, 1st Baronet (until d. 1876); his daughter, Hon. Mrs. Eliot Constantine Yorke, London and Southampton (until d. 1926; her estate sale, Christie's, London, May 6, 1927, no. 29, as "Contemplation," for £60.0.0 to Smith [Wildenstein]); [Wildenstein, London and New York, 1927–61; sold to de Groot]; Adelaide Milton de Groot, New York (1961–67)

Yokohama Museum of Art. "Treasures from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: French Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century," March 25–June 4, 1989, no. 45.

James Thompson. "Jean-Baptiste Greuze." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 47 (Winter 1989/90), pp. 47–48, ill. (color).

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 378, ill.

Michel Delon, ed. The Libertine: The Art of Love in Eighteenth-Century France. New York, 2013, ill. p. 240 (color).

Lelia Packer in Humphrey Wine. The Eighteenth Century French Paintings. London, 2018, p. 242, fig. 1 (color).

Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 222, 224–25, no. 68, ill. (color).