The Fortune Teller (Caravaggio)
The Fortune Teller is a painting by Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It exists in two versions, both by Caravaggio, the first from c. 1594, the second from c. 1595. The dates in both cases are disputed.
first version
second version
Italian lira banknote depicting Caravaggio and his painting, 1990 issue
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Chalk portrait of Caravaggio, c. 1621
Basket of Fruit, c. 1595–1596, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan
The Musicians, 1595–1596, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (c. 1595), Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford