Detail of The Fortune Teller by de La Tour in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2019

The Fortune-Teller, probably 1630s


Object Details

Artist: Georges de La Tour (French, Vic-sur-Seille 1593–1653 Lunéville)

Date: probably 1630s

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 40 1/8 x 48 5/8 in. (101.9 x 123.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1960

Accession Number: 60.30


This celebrated painting, which was only discovered in the middle of the twentieth century, catches the moment when a wealthy young man, distracted by having his fortune told by an old gyspy woman, is robbed by her companions. The costume and composition may have been influenced by a theatrical scene, but such cautionary images, made popular by Caravaggio, were painted throughout Europe in the seventeenth century. Although scholars have debated whether the artist had seen Caravaggio’s work in Rome, the inscription in the right corner includes the name of the town where the artist lived in northeastern France.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436838