The fortune teller of Buenaventura

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:28 +0000

Jan Cossiers (1600-1671), a painter of Flemish origin, produced several versions of the same subject of the gypsy fortune-teller. The present situation can be traced back to the two paintings on the same theme by Caravaggio (1571-1610) at the end of the 16th century, but with a more complex scheme involving various figures. In this image, a languid, confident-looking boy has allowed himself to be persuaded to be read by a gypsy woman with two children in tow, who uses a second to steal his hand. The exuberant and even luxurious costumes of the gypsies of Nicolas Regnier (1591-1667) or Georges de la Tour (1593-1652) have been dispelled here, leaving room for ragged clothes at the ends, this gives them a ragged appearance that can be explained by the demographic reality and the poverty that plagued much of Europe in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), but which also finds its raison d’être in the implementation of harsh anti-Gypsy legislation, which classified them as marginalised and even criminal beings. Despite this, such circumstances do not prevent the women in Cossiers’s work from wearing one of the most striking and unique elements of their clothing, the bern, that circular hat with a wicker frame made by interweaving different coloured fabrics. The scene is completed by two other figures, namely a girl with her hand held out in a gesture of silence and a large-mustached gypsy wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a sword in his hand. This leaves open the possibility that we are dealing with a group in which everyone, through their gestures and movements, is linked to the action.

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Ludicrum chiromanticum Praetorii

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:21 +0000

Chiromancy or fortune-telling was under suspicion until the 15th century, as it was considered a pseudo-science more suited to charlatans; nevertheless, from 1500 it became extremely popular and it was not long before the first treatises were published around the first quarter of the century, including Patricio Tricasso’s La quiromancia, which was republished during the following two centuries due to its notable success. Even more famous was the book by the Jesuit theologian Martín Antonio del Río (1551-1608) entitled Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex, in which he attributed to gypsy women the speciality of reading hands for divinatory purposes. Towards the middle of the 17th century and towards the end of the century, other treatises such as La Chiromance Royale et Nouvelle by Adrian Sicler, La Chiromance, La Physionomie et la Geomance by Peruchio or Les Ouvres by Jean Belot, in which he disserted on fortune-telling and physiognomy, among other disciplines, would become widespread. Although the pretensions of these treatises were scientific, or at least sought to lend a certain credibility to these practices, there were also those who considered them to be superstition. This is the case of Johannes Praetorius and his Ludicrum chiromanticum Praetorii, whose first pages reproduce an illustration in which some women (probably gypsies, as one of them is carrying her child in her cloak, as was customary, and because they are all barefoot) say good fortune to a man while a child takes advantage of the situation to rob him. Torreblanca must have had a similar opinion of gypsies, since in his treatise De Magia published in 1678 he said that palm reading was a practice of which “the women of that mob of lost and unfaithful people whom the Italians call Cingari, the Latins call Egyptians and we call gypsies” took advantage.

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Quiromancia - History Lab

The fortune teller of Buenaventura

Ludicrum chiromanticum Praetorii