For centuries, the lemon has been identified with hope but also with life’s bitter moments. Eugenio Montale, Pablo Neruda and many others have identified tears with the tart juice held within the lemon. It has become a recurring metaphor for soul-splitting disappointment. The figure in this painting summons and reminds us of that metaphor and all the bitterness it can infuse in all but especially in a woman, the bearer of life itself. As the American poet, Melissa Stein, asked in her poem, “Lemon and Cedar” - “What is so pure as grief?/ A wreck set sail just to be wrecked again/There will be no books in that house, only transfusions./And all the lemon and cedar in the world won’t rid the walls of that hospital smell.”