The Fortune-Teller

Darting eyes and busy hands create a captivating narrative between otherwise staid figures, each of which is richly clothed in meticulously painted combinations of color and texture. La Tour took on a theme popularized in Northern Europe by prints and in Rome by Caravaggio: an old Roma (formerly identified with the derisive term "Gypsy") woman reads the young man’s fortune as her beautiful companions take the opportunity to rob him. This celebrated painting, which was only discovered in the mid-twentieth century, is inscribed with the name of the town where the artist lived in northeastern France, supporting the possibility that he developed such works independent of Caravaggio’s precedent.