19th century FRENCH SCHOOL, after Simon VOUET.... Lot 307

19th century FRENCH SCHOOL, after Simon VOUET. The Fortune Teller. Original canvas, original carved and gilded wood frame. 91 x 132 cm. Chips to frame. Remake of a painting by Vouet in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome (see catalog of the exhibition Simon Vouet (les années italiennes 1613/1627), Nantes, 2008, n°12, reproduced). Twenty years after Caravaggio, Vouet took up the subject again, introducing a third thief: an old gypsy woman, who would force the theme in the direction of bohemian thieves, and make explicit the stakes of money and sex that Caravaggio had merely suggested. The balance of power. The man is cornered in the center of the painting, between the teller who lures him and the thief who, behind his back, relieves him of his purse. The composition plays on the symmetry between the young and the old, the beautiful and the ugly, similarly veiled in white. However, the expressions of the two women are at odds with each other: the one who should be charming with her youthfulness looks at the man with a serious gaze; and the one who should be concentrating on her petty theft smiles with her toothless mouth and looks at the viewer with an air of understanding. The ironic moment: And what is the admonisher's right hand doing? An obscene gesture over her victim's shoulder. (see - Doing the fig). So not only is the old woman not hiding from the viewer, she's also making him a witness to the clumsy man's stupidity: her left hand clutches her purse, while her right hand, just above it, depicts a tiny male genitalia, showing the contempt of a bohemian at the end of her career for all those she's duped. Un gars de la campagne: If Vouet can afford to ridicule the man, it's because he's no longer an overly naive son of a family, as in Caravaggio. The antagonism between the native and the nomad, between the rich and the poor, has here been transformed into an opposition within the same working class, between the smart city girls and the country bumpkin. The latter is probably a cowherd, since he's carrying a single-legged milking stool (known in the French Alps as a bottacul) on his shoulder: attached by a rope to the shepherd's buttocks, it allowed him to have his hands free to move from one animal to another. The choice of this rare accessory is perfectly relevant here: the man, having milked his cows, is in turn relieved by more formidable females. Parallel registers: in the upper register: on the left, the man's hand brandishes an ambitious phallic symbol - which, given its use as a "bottaculus", would be rather threatening to his own buttocks; on the right, the old woman's hand mocks this boast, mimicking a miniature male sex and ridiculous penetration. In the lower register: on the left, the caressing hands of the teller envelop the man's pogne; on the right, the castrating hand of the thief relieves him of his purse. Thus, the young man is surrounded by the enticing young girl and the cunning old woman, and the moral of this scene condemns deceit and naiveté.