# The Fortune Teller [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [VALENTIN DE BOULOGNE]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 150 x 239 cm ## Commentary The Fortune Teller c. 1620 Oil on canvas, 150 x 239 cm Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio The most original tavern scenes of the Caravaggesque painters are those by Valentin. He participated vigorously in the tavern life of Rome, enjoying the company of notoriously rowdy Flemish artists. Throughout the 1620s, in his increasingly ambitious compositions, whose figures are often linked in a deep space by bold diagonals, Valentin deepened the menacing atmosphere of inn and guardhouse. And most strikingly, he developed a sense of melancholy. In the Fortune Teller the mood is urgent, with dark undercurrents, and the soldier on the right raises his glass to the spectator, in a melancholy invitation to mistrust the future, and seize the pleasure of the passing moment. ## Related artworks - [Card-sharpers]() - [Christ Driving the Money Changers out of the Temple]() - [Company with Fortune-Teller \(detail\)]() - [Company with Fortune-Teller \(detail\)]() - [Company with Fortune-Teller]() - [Crowning with Thorns]() - [David with the Head of Goliath and Two Soldiers]() - [David with the Head of Goliath \(detail\)]() - [David with the Head of Goliath]() - [Denial of Saint Peter]() - [Expulsion of the Money-Changers from the Temple]() - [Fortune Teller \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()