''The Fortune Teller'' is a painting by

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

artist

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

. It exists in two versions, both by Caravaggio, the first from c. 1594 (now in the

Musei Capitolini The Capitoline Museums (Italian: ''Musei Capitolini'') are a group of art and archaeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. The historic seats of the museums are Palazzo dei Conservatori and Pala ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

), the second from c. 1595 (which is in the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the '' Venus de Milo''. A central ...

museum,

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

). The dates in both cases are disputed.

Subject matter

The painting shows a foppishly-dressed boy (in the second version the model is believed to be Caravaggio's companion, the Sicilian painter

Mario Minniti Mario Minniti (8 December 1577 – 22 November 1640) was an Italian artist active in Sicily after 1606. Born in Syracuse, Sicily, he arrived in Rome in 1593, where he became the friend, collaborator, and model of the key Baroque painter Miche ...

), having his palm read by a

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

girl. The boy looks pleased as he gazes into her face, and she returns his gaze. Close inspection of the painting reveals what the young man has failed to notice: the girl is removing his ring as she gently strokes his hand.

Fortune teller's deceit used as metaphor for Caravaggio's seductive illusionism

Caravaggio's painting, of which two versions exist, shows a well-groomed, vain young man having his palm read by a Romani woman. The wily Romani woman is guilty of deceit, however: her seductive smile is false, and because the young man has been charmed off his feet by her beauty, he does not notice that she has meanwhile slipped the ring from his finger. In 1603 the poet

Gaspare Murtola Gaspare Murtola (; d. 1624 or 1625) was an Italian poet and writer of madrigals. He is known for a bitter literary feud with Giambattista Marino, carried out "with sonnets, invectives, and pistol shots," and for references he makes in his poetry ...

dedicated a madrigal to Caravaggio's ''Fortune Teller'', in which he compares the deceit of the sensuous Romani woman with the illusionistic manner of Caravaggio, therefore implying that the viewer, like the young man, is the victim of duplicity. The madrigal is addressed to Caravaggio himself: `Non so qual sia più maga / O la donna, che fingi, / O tu che la dipingi. / Di rapir quella è vaga / Coi dolci incanti suoi / Il core e ’l sangue a noi. Tu dipinta, che appare / Fai, che viva si veda. Fai, che viva, e spirante altri / la creda.' L. Salerno,‘Poesia e simboli nel Caravaggio’, in Palatino, X, 2 (1966), p. 109. (I don't know who is the greater sorcerer / The woman you portray / Or you who paint her. Through sweetest incantation / She doth desire to steal / Our very heart and blood. Thou wouldst in thy portrayal / Her living, breathing image / For others reproduce, That they too may believe it.)

Style

Caravaggio's biographer Giovanni Pietro

Bellori Giovanni Pietro Bellori (15 January 1613 – 19 February 1696), also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian painter and antiquarian, but, more famously, a prominent biographer of artists of the 17th century, equiva ...

relates that the artist picked the Romani girl out from passers-by on the street in order to demonstrate that he had no need to copy the works of the masters from antiquity: :"When he was shown the most famous statues of Phidias and Glykon in order that he might use them as models, his only answer was to point towards a crowd of people saying that nature had given him an abundance of masters." This passage is often used to demonstrate that the classically trained

Mannerist Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Ita ...

artists of Caravaggio's day disapproved of Caravaggio's insistence on painting from life instead of from copies and drawings made from older masterpieces. However, Bellori ends by saying, "and in these two half-figures aravaggiotranslated reality so purely that it came to confirm what he said." The story is probably apocryphal – Bellori was writing more than half a century after Caravaggio's death, and it doesn't appear in Mancini's or in Giovanni Baglione, the two contemporary biographers who had known him – but it does indicate the essence of Caravaggio's revolutionary impact on his contemporaries – beginning with ''The Fortune Teller'' – which was to replace the Renaissance theory of art as a didactic fiction with art as the representation of real life.

Second version

The 1594 ''Fortune Teller'' aroused considerable interest among younger artists and the more avant garde collectors of Rome, but, according to Mancini, Caravaggio's poverty forced him to sell it for the low sum of eight scudi. It entered the collection of a wealthy banker and connoisseur, the

Marchese A marquess (; french: marquis ), es, marqués, pt, marquês. is a nobleman of high hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The German language equivalent is Markgraf (margrave). A woman w ...

Vincente Giustiniani, who became an important patron of the artist. Giustiniani's friend, Cardinal

Francesco Maria Del Monte Francesco Maria del Monte, full name Francesco Maria Bourbon del Monte Santa Maria, (5 July 1549 – 27 August 1627) was an Italian Cardinal, diplomat, and connoisseur of the arts. His fame today rests on his early patronage of the important Bar ...

, purchased the companion piece, ''Cardsharps'', in 1595, and at some point in that year Caravaggio entered the Cardinal's household. For Del Monte, Caravaggio painted a second version of ''The Fortune Teller'', copied from the Giustiniani but with certain changes. The undifferentiated background of the 1594 version becomes a real wall broken by the shadows of a half-drawn curtain and a window sash, and the figures more completely fill the space and defining it in three dimensions. The light is more radiant, and the cloth of the boy's doublet and the girl's sleeves more finely textured. The dupe becomes more childlike and more innocently vulnerable, the girl less wary-looking, leaning in towards him, more in command of the situation.

Genre

''The Fortune Teller'' is one of two known genre pieces painted by Caravaggio in the year 1594, the other being ''

Cardsharps A card sharp (also cardsharp, card shark or cardshark, sometimes hyphenated) is a person who uses skill and/or deception to win at poker or other card games. "Sharp" and "shark" spellings have varied over time and by region. The label is no ...

''. ''The Fortune Teller'' is believed to be the earlier of the two, and dates from the period during which the artist had recently left the workshop of the

Giuseppe Cesari Giuseppe Cesari (14 February 1568 – 3 July 1640) was an Italian Mannerist painter, also named Il Giuseppino and called ''Cavaliere d'Arpino'', because he was created ''Cavaliere di Cristo'' by his patron Pope Clement VIII. He was much patronize ...

to make his own way selling paintings through the dealer Costantino. The subject of the painting was not unprecedented. In his ''

Lives of the Artists ''The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'' ( it, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori), often simply known as ''The Lives'' ( it, Le Vite), is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-ce ...

'',

Giorgio Vasari Giorgio Vasari (, also , ; 30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance Master, who worked as a painter, architect, engineer, writer, and historian, who is best known for his work '' The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculp ...

notes that one of

Franciabigio Franciabigio (1482 – 24 January 1525) was an Italian painter of the Florentine Renaissance. His true name may have been Francesco di Cristofano; he is also referred to as either Marcantonio Franciabigio or Francia Bigio. Life and career He wa ...

's followers, his brother Agnolo, painted a sign for a perfumer's shop "containing a gipsy woman telling the fortune of a lady in a very graceful manner".This parallel was suggested by Prof. David Ekserdjian on the

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discussion programme ''

In Our Time In Our Time may refer to: * ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid * ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema" * ''In ...

'', episode
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artist
(27 May 2010, circa 37 minutes in). Quote: "That's an amazing reference! Because, OK, it's an inn sign rather than a formal painting, but this is someone doing a Caravaggio subject decades and decades before Caravaggio."

References

External links

''A Caravaggio Rediscovered, The Lute Player''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on this painting (see cat. no. 1) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fortune Teller Paintings by Caravaggio 1590s paintings Paintings in the Louvre by Italian artists Paintings in the Capitoline Museums