Focus on this artwork and analyze the 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.)
Gaspare Murtola Romani Caravaggio