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 (now in the Musei Capitolini in Rome), the second from c. 1595 (which is in the Louvre museum, Paris). The dates in both cases are disputed. Subject matter The painting shows a foppishly-dressed boy (in the second version the model is believed to be Caravaggio's companion, the Sicilian painter Mario Minniti), having his palm read by a Romani girl. The boy looks pleased as he gazes into her face, and she returns his gaze. Close inspection of the painting reveals what the young man has failed to notice: the girl is removing his ring as she gently strokes his hand. Fortune teller's deceit used as metaphor for Caravaggio's seductive illusionism Caravaggio's painting, of which two versions exist, shows a well-groomed, vain young man having his palm read by a Romani woman. The wily Romani woman is guilty of deceit, however: her seductive smile is false, and because the young man has been charmed off his feet by her beauty, he does not notice that she has meanwhile slipped the ring from his finger. In 1603 the poet Gaspare Murtola dedicated a madrigal to Caravaggio's Fortune Teller, in which he compares the deceit of the sensuous Romani woman with the illusionistic manner of Caravaggio, therefore implying that the viewer, like the young man, is the victim of duplicity. The madrigal is addressed to Caravaggio himself: `Non so qual sia più maga / O la donna, che fingi, / O tu che la dipingi. / Di rapir quella è vaga / Coi dolci incanti suoi / Il core e ’l sangue a noi. Tu dipinta, che appare / Fai, che viva si veda. Fai, che viva, e spirante altri / la creda.' (I don't know who is the greater sorcerer / The woman you portray / Or you who paint her. Through sweetest incantation / She doth desire to steal / Our very heart and blood. Thou wouldst in thy portrayal / Her living, breathing image / For others reproduce, That they too may believe it.) Style Caravaggio's biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori relates that the artist picked the Romani girl out from passers-by on the street in order to demonstrate that he had no need to copy the works of the masters from antiquity: "When