About this work
Two figures fill the canvas in close half-length — a foppishly dressed boy having his palm read by a Romani girl.
The boy looks pleased as he gazes into her face, and she returns his gaze. The palette is warm and earthy: burnished ochres and deep browns set against the pale flesh of two hands locked together at the picture's centre. Clearly denoted are the tactile qualities of the linen shirt undergarment with its embroidered lace cuffs, the heavy brocade upper costume with its velvety decorative stripes, and the coarser dark cloak draped over the young man's shoulder.
The girl's voluminous cloak tied over one shoulder and her linen turban and blouse are historically correct Romani dress. What the young man does not see — and what draws the eye on second look — is the con being played out beneath the charm: close inspection of the painting reveals that the girl is removing his ring as she gently strokes his hand.
*The Fortune Teller* is one of two known genre pieces painted by Caravaggio in 1594, the other being *The Cardsharps*, and dates from the period during which the artist had recently left the workshop of Giuseppe Cesari to make his own way selling paintings through the dealer Costantino.
The 1594 *Fortune Teller* aroused considerable interest among younger artists and the more avant-garde collectors of Rome, yet Caravaggio's poverty forced him to sell it for just eight scudi.
It entered the collection of the wealthy banker and connoisseur Marchese Vincente Giustiniani, who became an important patron of the artist.
With *The Fortune Teller*, Caravaggio introduced into Italian painting a subject known, if at all, only in Netherlandish art: the genre scene depicting everyday life but with a hidden or underlying meaning intended for the observant viewer.
The first version is now held at the Musei Capitolini in Rome.
This is a painting for rooms that reward stillness — a study, a reading room, a hallway where light falls at an angle and the eye has somewhere to travel. It is an early work in which Caravaggio deals very innovatively with a motif that had never before been made the sole subject of a picture. Its scale and warmth suit an intimate setting rather than a grand one: two figures, no landscape, no narrative apparatus — just human nature caught in the act. In 1603, the poet Gaspare Murtola dedicated a madrigal to the painting, implying that the viewer, like the young man, is the victim of duplicity — seduced by the surface before realising what is actually happening. It speaks to the viewer who looks twice,
