A Fortune-teller, Bravo, Lute Player, Drinking Figure, and Pick-pocket.

(Valentin de Boulogne)

The subject of the Buona ventura or fortune-teller was a popular one with Caravaggesque artists. Caravaggio himself painted two compositions now in the Museé du Louvre, Paris and the Museo Capitolina, Rome.  The genre was then further popularised by Bartolomeo Manfredi who painted at least four versions ranging from three to seven figures. His earlier compositions are relatively simple and planar in composition, but the seven-figure work introduced greater spatial complexity and used a stone table or sarcophagus as a central element. The genre was immediately adopted by northern artists, such as Valentin, Nicolas Tournier and Nicolas Regnier, who made this kind of composition, sometimes centred round musicians and drinkers, sometimes round the fortune-teller, something of a speciality. Just as Manfredi had experimented with varying complexities of composition, so Valentin’s four surviving fortune-teller compositions vary from four to fourteen figures. Again, like Manfredi, those works thought to have been executed early in his career are the ones where the figures are rather compactly arranged and of more planar and simple three dimensional composition. Many of Valentin’s more mature works after c.1622-25 adopt a table covered with a carpet in the Flemish style as part of the composition. Earlier works, such as the two paintings with a subject of Musicians and Drinkers (Indianapolis, Museum of Art and Paris, Musée du Louvre) incorporate a stone slab or sarcophagus with a decorated edge which probably derives from Manfredi. A virtually identical stone slab to the one in the Louvre Musicians and Drinkers is a fundamental stage prop to the composition of this Fortune-teller, Bravo, Lute Player, Drinking Figure, and Pick-pocket. It would therefore seem probable that this is an early work which should be dated before 1620 and probably shortly before 1618. The relatively shallow dimensional space in this picture as well as the comparatively attenuated chiaroscuro, which tends to become more contrasted in later works, would also indicate an early dating. The connection with Manfredi is still very strong in this composition as are the borrowings from Caravaggio’s compositions, notably the idea of the armoured bravo seen from behind and the handsome youth on the left in his black and white striped shirt, whose prototype is probably derived from the Fort Worth Cardsharps.  The composition is marked both by a strong sense of cohesion and at the same time of animation while two of the figures looking out of the composition engage the eye of the spectator drawing him into the conspiracy taking place. What is unusual in the present picture is the presence of an evening sky, seemingly lit by the setting sun, as a backdrop to the composition. This has no precedent in Valentin’s oeuvre and is unusual in Caravaggist painting where a neutral brown or grey toned backdrop is the norm. It has been suggested that the sky might have been a later addition but technical analysis shows beyond any doubt that the sky was not painted after the figures but beforehand and that large and significant pentiments overlap the sky which is freely and loosely brushed over a typical dark ground.

The success of Valentin’s profane compositions is demonstrated by numerous copies and versions and this is once again the case with the present picture. A seventeenth- century copy, but adopting a neutral background, hangs in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (see figs 3a, b and c). There it is paired with a five figure composition of Musicians and Drinkers which is itself a seventeenth-century copy of the eponymous original in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg. A further pair of later and still coarser copies was on the London art market in the 1980s with Wengraf and was sold to an Italian private collection. It should be noted that it is rather improbable, despite the subject matter, that the Fortune-teller, Bravo, Lute Player, Drinking Figure, and Pick-pocket was originally conceived as a pendant for the Strasbourg Musicians and Drinkers. The Strasbourg picture has both a more evolved composition and markedly stronger chiaroscuro and probably post dates the London Fortune-teller by several years. Possibly both pictures were acquired by the same Roman collector in the second half of the 1620s and were hung in a celebrated collection where they would have been well know and thus have given rise to two sets of copies en pendant.

Technical analysis has clearly shown significant pentiments in the Fortune-teller, Bravo, Lute Player, Drinking Figure, and Pick-pocket. These take the form of changes during the actual painting of the composition and numerous small changes in the initial stages of the underlying blocking out of the placement of the figures. The most telling of these pentiments is a clear indication that the present work is the prototype from which the Copenhagen and ex-London art market copies derive. At the extreme right of the composition a man taps his nose in the time honoured expression indicating that either he knows something significant or that others should take note of something going on. Once again this figure type is drawn from several Manfredi compositions. In all three paintings this figure wears a dark cloak which envelops him. In his right hand he holds a chicken whose significance is that the bravo is about to be taken in by the gypsy fortune-teller. The infrared reflectogram indicates that in the Matthiesen Fortune-teller Valentin’s original intent was to show this man’s left arm enveloped in a white shirt with slashes), not dissimilar to that worn by the young bravo on the extreme left. Valentin may have thought that two splashes of high white colouring on the extreme edges of the composition would distract the eye from the central action and so the pentiment and the under painting were cancelled out and covered by the loose fitting cloak. The fact that the other two copies follow this change clearly indicates that this must be the prototype.

Marchese Raffaele Soprani, Sestri Levante,[1] then by descent.

Private Collection, Geneva, 1985.

Private Collection, London 1989.

Private Collection, Geneva 2002.

[1] This is the same R. Soprani who wrote the fundamental source on Genoese painting  La Vita de Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Genovesi, e de Forasterieri, che in Genova operarono con alcuni Ritratti de gli stessi. Opera postuma dell Illustrissimo Signor Rafaele Soprani nobile genovese. Aggiornatavi la vita  dell Autore per opera di Gio Nicol Cavana, patrizio genovese.., Genoa 1674.

Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, 1979, edited by L. Vertova, Turin 1990, I, p. 205 and p. 232; II, fig. 675.

M. Mojana, Valentin de Boulogne, Milan 1989, no.70, p. 192 and colour plate p. 193, p. 239, p. 260 & p. 262.

2001: An Art Odyssey, London, Matthiesen Gallery, 2001(catalogue of the exhibition), pp.222-231, pls. p.222,225,226

Reproduced in an article by Peter Bell and Dirk Suckow in Representation – Inklusion – Exklusion. Zur Semantisierung der ‘Zigeuner’ ed. Iulia Patrut and Herbert Uerlings, Trier, Universitat Trier, 2008.

Valentin de Boulogne, reinventer Caravage, in Dossiers de l’Art no. 246, March 2017, p. 2, ill.

Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini,and Siena, Santa Maria della Scala, Colori della Musica: Dipinti,  srumenti e concerti tra Cinquecento e Seicento, 2000-2001, no. 43, p. 202 and colour plate p. 203.

Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Darkness and Light: Caravaggio and His World, 2003-2004, no. 62, p. 202 and colour plate 203.

New York, Metropolitan Museum, Valentin de Boulogne: beyond Caravaggio, 2016, no.11, pp 109-110, colour illustration p108.