[8] In 1757, after the construction of the Rolling Hill nearby, the spring was hidden in a special chamber, from which water flowed to the pond through an underground conduit — a trough paved with cobblestones, with wooden walls and an overlap.

[10][Notes 2][11] Between 1808 and 1810, during the improvement of the site of the former Rolling Hill, the garden master Johann Busch and architect Luigi Rusca transformed the slope between the Granite Terrace they created and the Big Pond into green ledges with paths down them.

Semyonov interpreted this message as evidence of the installation of the bronze figure replacing the alabaster one, noting that in August of the same year, the sculptor was paid 3,000 rubles.

[4][18] A barefoot girl in an antique tunic sits on a large gray stone, tucking her legs beneath her and lowering her left hand, which holds a shard of a broken jug.

The system itself was deemed satisfactory, requiring only minor reconstruction: the rotten ceiling of the dripping chamber was replaced, the pipes were cleaned, and the clogging, which had caused difficulties with the water supply, was addressed.

[24][25] Semyonov suggested that it was around this time, due to the wide coverage of the repair work in the media, that a legend emerged claiming that the water from the fountain could cure bodily and cardiac ailments.

Dmitry Kuznetsov found it symbolic that, near the place where the sculpture was buried, the headquarters of the 250th Blue Division of Spanish volunteers was located at the dacha of Countess Julia Samoilova on the Pavlovsky highway.

[40] The writer, historian, and journalist Pavel Svinyin, who left the first direct account of the sculpture, wrote in 1817: “A beautiful peasant woman sits on granite in grief over her broken mug, from which flows the purest water in the neighborhood”.

[41] The famous local historian, publicist, and fiction writer Mikhail Pyliaev mentions only this version of the fountain's plot in his 1889 book The Forgotten Past of Petersburg's Suburbs.

[42][Notes 5][7] In 1999, in an article in the journal Nauka i Religiya, Lyudmila Belozerova, a researcher of sculptor Pavel Sokolov's work and the author of the sculptural image, suggested that the model for the statue might have been the wife of Emperor Alexander I, Elizabeth Alexeevna.

[44] The secretary of the embassy of the Saxon Elector described the appearance of Elizabeth Alexeevna as follows:"Her facial features are extremely fine and correct: Greek profile, large blue eyes, and the most beautiful blond hair.

[45]The statue resembled Elizabeth Alexeevna in both face and figure, but during Alexander's reign, this similarity was either not emphasized due to the sovereign's complicated relationship with his wife or remained unnoticed.

[5][46] Belozerova also pointed out as evidence that, in memory of the Empress's daughter who passed away, the Italian sculptor Paolo Triscorni had already created a sculptural composition of a similar theme— a saddened young woman sitting with her head resting on her hand.

[47] Betancourt's biographer, Vladimir Pavlov, supported this version, noting that initially, the Tsarskoye Selo statue was surrounded by a chain-link fence, "like a monument on a conventional grave".

The researcher argued that Pushkin was in love with the Emperor's wife and was familiar with her tragic fate, which allowed him to recognize the meaning the sculptor had intended for the statue.

[48] Nikolai Antsiferov, a candidate of philology and cultural critic, highlighted the fountain's favorable location near the granite wharf on the lake shore, nestled in a small grove.

[21] Lydia (Tsira) Yemina, a researcher at the Catherine Palace Museum, observed that while La Fontaine concluded in his fable that dreams are futile, Sokolov's sculpture, in contrast, symbolizes the triumph of life's joy over sorrow.

She is at rest, and the composition's primary focus is on her frontal and one lateral aspect (left of the viewer), where, according to Petrov, “the classical harmony of the silhouette is revealed with special clarity”.

The art historian believed that stylistically, the sculpture aligns with the late works of the Alexander I era sculptor Theodosius Shchedrin and with Ivan Martos's tomb statue of Princess Elizabeth Gagarina.

In her view, the sculpture is aligned with the Empire direction in Western Europe, represented by Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen, where the emotionality of their works is superficial, but they possess “smoothness of silhouette, simplicity of composition, and impeccable marble processing”.

According to Likhachev, Pushkin, in his poems, responded primarily to the “sensibility” of Tsarskoye Selo's nature, both through poetic sketches of Lorrain's landscapes and “the free philosophy contained in them”.

[56] Candidate of Art History Ludmila Doronina noted that “the perfectly molded figure, depicted in a natural and relaxed pose, evokes ancient examples”.

[20] Dmitry Kuznetsov, in the biography of Augustin Betancourt, wrote that the thin trickle of water oozing from the broken jug was intended to symbolize “the fragility of human existence and the ghostliness of airy castles”.

[57][58] The poet also emphasized elements of daily life from the antique era inherent in the sculpture, such as hairstyles, clothing, and classical forms...[7] Abram Tertz (the literary pseudonym of Andrei Sinyavsky) noted in connection with The Girl with the Jug that Pushkin “was drawn to statues, one must think, by the affinity of souls and coincidence in the idea—the desire to delay the fleeting moment, pouring it into a timeless, everlasting gesture”.

[60] In this poem, the researcher saw all the parameters of the epigram genre: “connection with the inscription, characteristic size, not avoiding repetition, simplicity and importance of style, and a two-part composition, unfolding the description of the 'monument of art' and capturing its beauty in an 'instant thought'”.

[61] In Alexei Ilyichev's opinion, Pushkin's epigram is both a description of the Tsarskoye Selo statue and the myth of the girl's transformation into frozen stone and the emergence of an eternal spring.

[63] Delarue's version reflected La Fontaine's plot more accurately than Pushkin’s, but his poem is considered much weaker (the opposite viewpoint was expressed by Boris Chukhlov).

[64][65] Some literary scholars believed Delarue’s poem to be a polemical response to Pushkin, as he “corrected” inaccuracies and shifted the emphasis from the statue to the fountain, turning it into an allegory of hope.

Innokenty Annensky, in a poem dedicated to L. I. Mikulich, described "the beautiful and mysterious image of Tsarskoye Selo Park" and saw in the girl with the jug not a French peasant, but a nymph.

[75] The authors of the commentary edition of Pushkin's works noted the similarity between the sculpture in Tsarskoye Selo and the poet's drawing in Chapter III of Eugene Onegin (PD 835.