An elderly woman holds a young man's palm and studies it with great solemnity. Around him stand three young women in rich scarves and embroidered cloth. Everyone is staring at someone else. And while the young man gazes at the fortune-teller, one of the women is slipping a coin out of his pocket, and another is snipping the medal off his chain with a small knife.
The great trick of Georges de La Tour's painting is that nobody looks at the hands. The crime happens entirely in the glances. The women trade looks with each other, and the old woman keeps the boy's attention. The boy, dressed in a fine pink-sleeved vest with a feathered cap, has no idea. He is a fool in the old sense, a rich, trusting youth being fleeced, and the painting is a kind of warning.
The subject was popular in the Netherlands and later in France. Caravaggio painted a famous version, and La Tour answers it in his own style. In place of Caravaggio's shadows he chose a flat, bright light and clean, smooth shapes. His figures look carved, and nobody moves. The stillness is what makes the crime feel so cold.
La Tour even signed it, a rare thing for him, writing his name and his home region of Lorraine at the top right. It matters because the painter was nearly forgotten for centuries, and the Metropolitan Museum bought this picture in 1960, helping to confirm him as a major artist.
Take a second look at the faces. Do you think the boy really does not know?
La Tour's The Fortune-Teller appears on our: