Jean-Baptiste Greuze - Cultural References

Cultural References

In the second chapter of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Valley of Fear, Holmes' discussion of his enemy Professor Moriarty involves a Greuze painting, intended to illustrate Moriarty's wealth despite his small income.

A 1946 episode of the old time radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes entitled "The Girl With the Gazelle" centers around the theft of a fictional Greuze painting of the same name, masterminded by Professor Moriarty. The episode, written by Denis Green and Antony Boucher, was "suggested by an incident in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story, The Final Problem." There is nothing comparable in that story, though a subplot concerning Moriarty's theft of the Mona Lisa would be added to the beginning of an adaptation of "The Final Problem" for the television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1985. It was more likely inspired by a reference to Greuze's "La jeune fille à l'agneau," observed on Moriarty's wall during a police interview in The Valley of Fear.

In the sixth part of The Leopard, a novel by the Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the Prince of Salina watches a Greuze painting, La Mort du Juste, and he starts thinking about death when his nephew Tancredi comes and asks "Are you courting death ?"

In Agatha Christie's "The Murder at the Vicarage," Miss Marple mentions her nephew considers another character "the perfect Greuze."

In the sixteenth chapter of E. M. Forster's novel Maurice, Clive mentions that he finds himself unable to approach Greuze's "subject matter" from anything more than purely aesthetic perspective, contrasting Greuze's work with that of the Greek sculptors in the process.

Chinese author Xiao Yi mentions Greuze's work The Broken Pitcher throughout the first half of her novel Blue Nails. The Broken Pitcher is also mentioned in the first scene of the Jean-Paul Sartre play, The Respectful Prostitute.