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| Caravaggio, The Fortune Teller, 1593-95 |
Unable to get near the door of the Orangerie to see
the Soutine exhibition because of the crowds, Tim and I executed plan B
last Friday, and settled for an afternoon at the Louvre. I had recently read an
article on The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599)
and so, with Caravaggio on the mind, we headed up the great hall to find Caravaggio’s
The Fortune Teller (1593-95) or La Diseuse de Bonne Aventure as the
French title card names it.
Much is often made of this painting’s narrative: a young
boy being seduced by a fortune teller as she surreptitiously takes his ring, he
being so mesmerized that he is oblivious to her duplicity. It is true, there is
an eroticism to the touch of his hand which is made ven more compelling by the
warm light coming through the window to the left of the painting. But what
seduces the viewer of The Fortune Teller
is not the narrative, it’s the light and the fabrics of the clothes worn by the
young man especially, in Caravaggio’s demonstration of wealth, social status,
the boy’s naievety and the woman’s deception.
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| Caravaggio, The Calling of St Matthew, 1599 |
The light coming in from the window somewhere to
the left and in front of the scene is glorious. As in his later masterpiece, The Calling of St Matthew, in which
light evolves from compositional force to the very subject of the painting when
Christ’s presence envelops Matthew, the light in The Fortune Teller does so much more than simply illuminate the
clandestine scene. Light bathes their actions in a soft erotic glow. The light defines
the boy’s face, making him cherubic, naïve and innocent. It also accentuates
the texture of his gloves, the stitching, the frills on his collar and cuffs,
and every hair in the feather on his hat. The sword, the feather, the fabrics,
including the boy’s skin and the woman’s fingernails overtake the substance of
the woman’s deceit. And if colour is enabled by paint as light, let’s not
forget the rich caramel of his jacket, the warm yellow of the wall, the
beautiful folds of his gloves.
The other curious detail that keeps the viewer
transfixed is the relay of looks between the two characters. Neither of them
looks at the other. Their looks both miss the other’s line of sight very
slightly, giving them both a self-containment, and thus, a distance from each
other. And then there is the “look” or momentum created by the painting. Our eye
is drawn up towards the window that does not exist, from where the sun is
coming. The source of the light might be said to be the true centre of the
painting, which might explain why the two human figures are pushed back by the
light, towards the right of the composition. Again, as if in a preface to The Calling of St Matthew four years
later, the light streams in as the compositional energy and the source of all
delight on this canvas.
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