A Girl with a Dove

Greuze's images of young women with doves belong to the explicitly erotic dimension of his practice — a vein that critics including Diderot recognized as running through even his ostensibly innocent genre scenes. The dove in Western iconography carries multiple charges: innocence, the soul, Venus, and domestic affection. In Greuze's hands, a girl tenderly holding a dove while gazing at the viewer participates in a coded language of feminine availability that his contemporaries understood without needing it stated. These images sold extremely well to collectors who could simultaneously enjoy the erotic charge and the surface innocence.

Greuze's soft blended modeling gives the girl's face and exposed neck a tactile warmth that was precisely calibrated for erotic effect — the skin rendered with unusual care while the dove provides a focal point for hands that might otherwise seem conspicuously suggestive. The loosened hair reinforces the image's ambiguous freedom.