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At the start of the 17th century, painting in France was not, on the whole, an instrument of state glory; it tended to be seen condescendingly as a manual business, a craft. The story of French art in this period is very largely that of painting's struggle to be seen on a level with literature or philosophy. This entailed confronting the source of all great artistic prototypes, Rome, which supplied models both antique and modern. The chief modern one was Caravaggio, who had died on a malarial Mediterranean beach at the start of the 17th century and left behind him a vast legacy of influence all over Europe. To paint commonplace models in tavern settings or caves of gloom, to infuse biblical subjects with an exacting realism and directness, to drive the mincing preciosity of late mannerism out of art—such were the aims of French Caravaggisti like Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632), whose Fortune Teller raises narrative to a pitch of ironic theater worthy of Caravaggio himself. It is a raffish image of tavern survival: the old circular comedy, as the gypsy woman bilks a credulous soldier while a man steals her chicken and a little girl lifts the thief's purse.
The best French painter to fall under Caravaggio's spell was, however, Georges de La Tour (1593-1652). His own Fortune Teller (the subject was perhaps bound to be popular in a country as worried about the future as early 17th century France) is condemned at the moment to a period of freakhood, thanks to 60 Minutes, which briefly rose from its usual torpor about cultural affairs to pillory it as a modern forgery. Reputable scholars agree, however, that there is no real question about The Fortune Teller's authenticity; its age has now been scientifically confirmed. It remains one of La Tour's masterpieces. Cleaned of grime and later repaints, it has a crispness and specificity of color, like taffeta in spring sunshine; and to see it in a room with seven other La Tours, including the Wrightsman Magdalen and The Musicians' Brawl, is to realize how the traits of style cited against it by detractors—the theatrical "unreality" of costume, the clear, generalized volumes of cylindrical arm or egg-shaped head—actually connect it to the rest of La Tour's oeuvre and help certify it as an autograph work.