Valentin de Boulogne: Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats)
![Five pale-skinned men gather around a rectangular table playing cards and dice against a dark, smoke-gray background in this horizontal painting. Light illuminates the scene dramatically from the upper left, creating bright areas and deep shadows. The two men closest to us play cards. One sits on our side of the table and faces our left in profile, wearing a gleaming, dark, armored breastplate and sleeves over scarlet-red tights. He has a dark brown beard and short, dark hair. He holds his stacked playing cards close to his chest, and he pulls the front one up with a forefinger and thumb as he looks at the man across from him. The young man near the left edge of the composition faces our right, almost in profile, as he half-kneels on his seat. He leans over the table, propped on one elbow. His other hand, closer to us, brushes the underside of his chin as he looks down at his cards. His right cheek and ear are brightly lit and much of the rest of his face cast into dark shadow, though there is a faint suggestion of a goatee around his parted lips. He wears a floppy, feathered cap, a bronze-brown shirt with full sleeves, and dark breeches over gray stockings. A bearded man with a tanned complexion stands behind the young man to our left. He looks toward the other end of the table at the dice players, and holds up a hand with two fingers extended. He wears a pointed metal helmet and holds a tall wooden staff with his other hand, along the left side of the canvas. Wrinkles line his forehead and create creases around his open mouth. Opposite us, two men look down at two small dice on the table. One man stands at the short end of the table to our right, with his right fingertips resting on the table over the dice. He wears a floppy, feathered cap over dark hair, and his brown beard is trimmed. His dark eyebrows are lowered and he has a long, straight nose. His ivory-white shirt has vertical black stripes and shimmers in the light. A metal collar, a piece of armor, rests around his neck and his hips are wrapped in a charcoal-gray cloth before being lost in the shadows under the table. In front of him, seen between the two card players, the fifth man faces the other dice player, leaning with his right hand on the table and holding up his other hand, palm out and fingers outstretched. His shoulder is bare where his cream-colored shirt has slipped down, and he wears a ruby-red, slashed, floppy hat. The light illuminates the back of his shoulder and side of his face, and the rest of his face is shrouded in shadow but we can see his mouth is open.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/cbcf2fc9-cd57-4132-a2f8-89ede31cfe1a/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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The Story
The dupe: a young man is engrossed by his cards, oblivious to the activity around him. His soft, pink silk shirt, adorned with lace and ribbons, and fair, smooth skin give him away—he appears to be wealthy but also inexperienced. It is getting late. Dark circles begin to shroud his eyes, the shadow of a beard circles his mouth, and locks of hair fall over his forehead.
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) (detail), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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The accomplice: a nefarious figure leans forward from the back of the room to read the young man’s hand. He juts two fingers from beneath his cape, signaling the cards’ contents to his partner.
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) (detail), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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The cheat: he is sitting upright, tense, and alert. His stony face conceals the deception.
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) (detail), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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The rogues: next to the cardplayers two men play dice. The man in the red cap—dirty, red-nosed as though he has been drinking—gestures vigorously. Has he just rolled the dice or is he arguing?
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) (detail), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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His opponent contemplates the dice wearily. Is he completely resigned, defeated, or close to an angry outburst?
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) (detail), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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The Painting
First translated into paint by the Italian master Caravaggio, images of cardsharps and cheats became immensely popular in the early seventeenth century. The narrative itself held dramatic appeal, but these paintings also carried various meanings and associations for a seventeenth-century audience.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo da Merisi), The Cardsharps, c. 1594, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
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Cardplaying was illegal but became highly popular throughout Europe during the sixteenth century. Lucas van Leyden was among the first to represent the subject in art. Here a group of upper-middle-class citizens plays a popular game called primero. The gentleman holding the ace of spades—the wild card—points to a pile of money in anticipation of his winnings. Van Leyden presents a titillating glimpse of men and women participating in illicit activity.
After Lucas van Leyden, The Card Players, probably c. 1550/1599, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.27
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The image also carried a moral message. Large sums of money have been wagered. The man in the background who holds his hand in his cloak is an emblem for laziness (Proverbs 19:24, “A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom”). The woman at the left who looks confidently out at the viewer warns against the seductive powers of women: pointing to the money and revealing the hearts in her hand, she will win the game of love.
Lucas van Leyden presents both the allure and the dangers of cardplaying—themes that are present in almost all images of cardplaying in the seventeenth century.
After Lucas van Leyden, The Card Players, probably c. 1550/1599, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.27
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Incessant warring throughout the sixteenth century produced a large population of rough, arrogant, only sporadically employed soldiers. These “bravos” idled about Rome, gambling, dueling, drinking, and womanizing. Each man in Valentin’s painting wears one part of a single uniform—a helmet, a breastplate, or a gorget. These men are mercenaries who had to forage for their armor and often dressed in an irregular fashion. Most seventeenth-century images of cheating cardplayers depict such gambling soldiers.
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
![A barefoot man wearing tattered clothing, with his hands clasped at his chest, kneels at the feet of an old, bearded man in this almost square painting. The pair is flanked by five people on our right and a man, boy, and calf on our left. All the people have pale skin. The kneeling man faces our right in profile and tilts his head up to look at the old man who embraces him. The younger man has shaggy, dark brown hair and a heavy five o'clock shadow. A small white dog jumps at his dirty, bare feet. The old man has a long gray beard and wears a black skullcap over gray hair. His voluminous dusty rose-pink cloak drapes over a teal-blue robe. To our right of the pair are a child, a woman, and three men. Some look at the embracing men while the others look at each other. At the front of that grouping, two men have brown hair and wispy mustaches. One wears a golden-yellow tunic and holds a silver tray piled with a shimmering sky-blue and pale pink garment, a bright white shirt, and a pair of sandals. Just beyond him and looking into his face, the second man wears gray with a dark green cloak draped over one shoulder. He holds up a gold ring with a ruby-red stone. To our left of the embracing men, a smiling blond boy leads the calf into the scene. Just beyond him is a thin, muscular man carrying an ax over one shoulder as he gazes down at the boy. The scene is set in a courtyard with walls that extend back on either side. Billowing putty-gray and white clouds fill the background.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/676fa96e-ad4e-4209-b985-ae0c15f5d902/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Images of cardplaying also came to be associated with the Prodigal Son, the biblical story of a young man who fell in with bad company, squandered his fortune, and later returned to his father to repent and ask forgiveness. Artists traditionally portrayed the emotional climax of the story, when father and son are reconciled, as the seventeenth-century Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo has done here.
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1667/1670, oil on canvas, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1948.12.1
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In this print, however, the French artist Jacques Callot depicts the Prodigal Son still reveling with a group of soldiers and women. An inscription warns against dissolute behavior.
Jacques Callot, The Card Players, c. 1628, etching and engraving, R.L. Baumfeld Collection, 1969.15.552
![Five pale-skinned men gather around a rectangular table playing cards and dice against a dark, smoke-gray background in this horizontal painting. Light illuminates the scene dramatically from the upper left, creating bright areas and deep shadows. The two men closest to us play cards. One sits on our side of the table and faces our left in profile, wearing a gleaming, dark, armored breastplate and sleeves over scarlet-red tights. He has a dark brown beard and short, dark hair. He holds his stacked playing cards close to his chest, and he pulls the front one up with a forefinger and thumb as he looks at the man across from him. The young man near the left edge of the composition faces our right, almost in profile, as he half-kneels on his seat. He leans over the table, propped on one elbow. His other hand, closer to us, brushes the underside of his chin as he looks down at his cards. His right cheek and ear are brightly lit and much of the rest of his face cast into dark shadow, though there is a faint suggestion of a goatee around his parted lips. He wears a floppy, feathered cap, a bronze-brown shirt with full sleeves, and dark breeches over gray stockings. A bearded man with a tanned complexion stands behind the young man to our left. He looks toward the other end of the table at the dice players, and holds up a hand with two fingers extended. He wears a pointed metal helmet and holds a tall wooden staff with his other hand, along the left side of the canvas. Wrinkles line his forehead and create creases around his open mouth. Opposite us, two men look down at two small dice on the table. One man stands at the short end of the table to our right, with his right fingertips resting on the table over the dice. He wears a floppy, feathered cap over dark hair, and his brown beard is trimmed. His dark eyebrows are lowered and he has a long, straight nose. His ivory-white shirt has vertical black stripes and shimmers in the light. A metal collar, a piece of armor, rests around his neck and his hips are wrapped in a charcoal-gray cloth before being lost in the shadows under the table. In front of him, seen between the two card players, the fifth man faces the other dice player, leaning with his right hand on the table and holding up his other hand, palm out and fingers outstretched. His shoulder is bare where his cream-colored shirt has slipped down, and he wears a ruby-red, slashed, floppy hat. The light illuminates the back of his shoulder and side of his face, and the rest of his face is shrouded in shadow but we can see his mouth is open.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/cbcf2fc9-cd57-4132-a2f8-89ede31cfe1a/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
About 1590, the Prodigal Son story was recast as a scene from contemporary life. Valentin's painting belongs to this tradition. While not overtly religious, its warning against the dangers of corruption and sin would have been clear to any seventeenth-century viewer.
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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Valentin’s figures are unflinchingly real: they wear the dirt, sweat, and desperation of Roman street life. His painting style—thin with rapid brushstrokes, subtly painted textures, and no underdrawing—adds to the sense of spontaneity.
At the same time, the gestures and expressions of the figures are overstated. The accomplice, for example, signals in an obvious, posed way as if he were a character in a drama who wants to be sure the audience follows the plot.
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) (details), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1
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The direct style of these paintings is typical of Counter-Reformation art. After the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church also launched a series of reforms, now known as the Counter-Reformation. Painted images played an important role in conveying the message of the church to a largely illiterate audience, and Catholic leaders instructed artists to make sensuous, clearly intelligible, and emotionally charged paintings that viewers could easily understand. These two martyred saints are inescapably realistic. Valentin brings the realism and passion of the period’s overtly religious narratives to his image of the cardsharps.
(left) Jusepe de Ribera, The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, 1634, oil on canvas, Gift of the 50th Anniversary Gift Committee, 1990.137.1
(right) Tanzio da Varallo, Saint Sebastian, c. 1620/1630, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.191
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Valentin de Boulogne, Life and Times
Valentin de Boulogne was a Frenchman who spent his entire career in Italy. Born near Boulogne, France, to a family of artists, little is known about his early life and work. Like most French artists of his generation, he was probably trained in the Italian mannerist style, which had spread through Europe by the end of the century. These two sixteenth-century Italian works are typically mannerist: with their elongated figures and unnatural colors, they appear artificial and esoteric.
(left) Pontormo, Monsignor della Casa, probably 1541/1544, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.83
(right) Agnolo Bronzino, The Holy Family, c. 1527/1528, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.387
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By the beginning of the seventeenth century, young artists from all over Europe flocked to Rome. Valentin made the trip sometime between 1611 and 1620. There he discovered artists who had moved away from mannerism toward a powerful, direct style, rooted in observation of the natural world. Two contrasting versions of this approach emerged: one classical and idealized, first practiced by Annibale Carracci and his family, and the other earthy and dramatic, pioneered by Caravaggio.
Most of the great French artists of the seventeenth century trained in Rome and gravitated toward one of these two styles.
(top) Annibale Carracci, River Landscape, c. 1590, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.58
(bottom) Caravaggio (Michelangelo da Merisi), The Taking of Christ, 1602, © Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Jesuit Community, Leeson Street, Dublin, who acknowledge the generosity of the late Dr. M. Lee-Wilson
![We look through shadowed trees at a river winding into the distance in this horizontal landscape painting. Close to us, a cluster of three thin trees and a larger central tree are deep in shadow, which contrasts with the light-filled scene beyond. The topaz-blue river curves from the lower right corner, across the canvas, and into the distance at the center. A few spindly trees grow along the riverbank in front of a hut with a thatched roof to our right. The bank to our left is lined with reeds and tall grasses. Behind the central shadowed tree, a long, low, narrow boat is occupied by four people with pale skin. To our left, a person with a dark garment and white collar reclines near a seated man wearing yellow and a feathered cap. To our right, another person reclines near the boatman who pushes the boat through the water using a long pole. The harvest yellow and sage green of the riverbanks and vegetation beyond the boats fades to hazy, pale blue mountains along the horizon line, which comes just over halfway up the composition. White clouds float across a blue sky above.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/0e373a5e-718d-40a2-bc6b-47be1812459b/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Annibale Carracci, his brother Agostino, and their cousin Lodovico established an art academy in Italy to promote a rational, forthright naturalism steeped in classical models.
In returning to nature, the Carracci created the first pure Italian landscapes, such as Annibale Carracci's River Landscape.
Annibale Carracci, River Landscape, c. 1590, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.58
![Three women, one man, and a winged child gather near a cave opening within a vast, distant landscape in this horizontal painting. The people are small in scale, taking up the lower left quadrant of the composition, and all have pale skin. Near the lower left corner, the man sits on a rock with his back mostly to us, so we see him in profile. Red cloth drapes around his hips and legs, and his chest and arms are bare. He braces a long staff in his far hand, and raises his right hand, closer to us, and points at the women. He is cleanshaven with a straight nose, closed lips, and brown, shoulder-length hair. To our right, two women stand and one sits on a cloth-covered rock. All three have brown hair that has been pulled back. They also have straight noses, and their lips are parted. The woman at the center of this trio wears a coral-red dress under lapis-blue cloth that drapes across her legs and is held in one hand. Smoke-blue fabric billows behind her. She stands with her body angled to our left, and she looks down at the man in profile. The back of one hand, to our right, rests near that hip, holding the fabric, and she points up with the index finger of her other hand. A peacock with its tail fanned open stands next to her, to our left. The other two women are nude except for a white cloth that partially covers the soft, rounded contours of their bodies. To our left of the peacock and close to it, the second woman holds her drapery so it covers her breasts and her groin. Her body faces us, and she turns her face to look at the central woman. A nude, winged child holding an arrow stands between her and the man. A blue ribbon across the child’s chest holds a quiver of arrows on his back. The third woman is to our right, sitting on a rock draped with a goldenrod-yellow cloth. A white cloth covers her hips, and she leans forward, touching her sandal. A long lance rests under the yellow cloth, and a metal helmet with a red feather sits next to the rock. Six sheep lie or graze along the grassy ground, closer to us. The rocky outcropping with the cave opening rises steeply along the left edge of the composition. A waterfall is tucked into shadows just beyond the cave, and tall trees enclose the left half of the scene. Nearly reaching the top of the canvas, the cluster of trees near the center have dark green canopies. A rocky bank is shown nearly in silhouette in the lower right corner, in front of a deep landscape with a body of water winding through low, marshy areas and a flat-topped formation. Mountains are hazy purple in the deep distance. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and the sky above has mauve-pink and lavender-gray clouds sweeping across a vivid blue sky.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/6f7521dc-a2a8-4c9f-8206-f3db66eccb86/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Two of the greatest French painters of the seventeenth century, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), followed the Carracci. These two artists, lifelong friends, were established in Rome by the 1620s and stayed there throughout their careers.
In works such as this one, Claude invented an idealized landscape. Grounded in nature, he has transformed this depiction of the Italian countryside into a timeless image of tranquil, ordered beauty. His lyrical, poetic works were much sought-after in his own lifetime.
Claude Lorrain, The Judgment of Paris, 1645/1646, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1969.1.1
![Twelve people and one child stand, sit, or kneel along a riverbank in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or tanned skin, and are muscular. They are in various stages of undress, wearing robes of golden yellow, ruby red, petal pink, azure blue, or cream white. To our right of center, a man, Jesus, stands facing us with his arms crossed over his chest. He wears a blue robe wrapped loosely across his shoulders and across his hips. He looks down, his blond hair falling alongside his face, as another man, wearing red, pours water from a shallow dish onto his head. A white dove flies with wings spread overhead. To our right of Jesus, one kneeling person wearing white holds up Jesus’s blue robes and another looks on, wearing a sage green robe and holding a voluminous rose-pink cloth. To our left, a group of five men react by throwing up hands, pointing upward, or looking up. One man with a gray beard and hair stands and bows his head over praying hands. A young boy wraps the arm we can see across the praying man's hips. Three more men to the left of this group pause as they undress to look toward Jesus. All the men stand or sit among puddles as a river spans the width of the painting behind the group and winds into the distance to our right. At the center of the composition, three men stand or recline on a grassy mound on the far side of the river. Tucked under trees at the peak of the mound, a smudge of white could be another kneeling person. Two more people walk along a path that crests the mound to our left. Mountains in the distance are slate blue beneath a vivid blue sky streaked with white clouds.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/0ad4855e-760a-476f-bbbb-8164f430b4ec/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Poussin illustrates the sacrament of baptism in another idealized landscape. The proportions of the figures are robust and the composition is balanced, despite the figures’ complex poses.
Nicolas Poussin, The Baptism of Christ, 1641/1642, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1946.7.14
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Valentin, Simon Vouet, Georges de La Tour, and many other French artists embraced a different kind of naturalism. They adopted the drama and earthy realism of Michelangelo da Merisi, called Caravaggio.
Caravaggio’s few scenes of contemporary lowlife—cheats and fortune tellers—were immensely influential, and other artists repeated these subjects throughout the seventeenth century. Caravaggio also interpreted religious stories, such as The Taking of Christ, as scenes from everyday, contemporary life. His figures, often modeled on local ruffians, are intensely human. Strong contrasts of light and shade (called chiaroscuro), often used within a plain, dark setting, give his works a concentrated, theatrical power.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo da Merisi), The Taking of Christ, 1602, © Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Jesuit Community, Leeson Street, Dublin, who acknowledge the generosity of the late Dr. M. Lee-Wilson
![Shown from the waist up, an elderly, balding, light-skinned man with a bushy white beard sits behind a table, facing us, in front of a winged angel who looks on in this shadowy, horizontal painting. The man sits with his body angled slightly to our right, and he turns his head to look in the opposite direction. His eyes are sunk in shadow under deeply furrowed brows, set in his lined face. His sparse, gray and white hair is tousled. He wears only a scarlet-red cloth draped across his lap and over his sinewy left arm, on our right. His open left hand is raised, palm up, at shoulder height. In his other hand, he holds a pen, hovering over a partially unwound scroll. His forearm rests on an open book beneath the scroll. He looks over his right shoulder at the curly-haired angel with snow-white wings. The angel wears a flowing, light blue robe with a golden yellow cloth draped around the chest and over the shoulders. Softly smiling, the backlit angel leans toward the man, face deep in shadow. With arms lifted, one hand gestures with a slightly crooked finger, pointing beyond the picture’s border to our left. In the other hand, the angel holds a golden horn in the dusky background behind the man’s left shoulder. Behind the man and angel and to our right, a single candle sits on two books lying in an arched wall niche. On the desk closest to us are a crumpled cloth on a book, a shiny rust-brown ball, a pair of eyeglasses, an inkpot, an hourglass, and a second book, to our right. Light coming from our upper left starkly illuminates the two people against the shadowed, earth-brown background.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/8cb10467-fce1-444c-8412-168ec845b730/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Simon Vouet, one of Valentin’s colleagues, had arrived in Rome by 1614. The two artists lived near each other in the parish of San Lorenzo. In Vouet’s painting, the dramatic lighting, earthy colors, and the saint’s unidealized body show Caravaggio’s influence.
Simon Vouet, Saint Jerome and the Angel, c. 1622/1625, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.52
![Two pale-skinned women wearing jewel-toned blue, pink, and yellow togas sit on the ground at the foot of a stone building, with three, winged, child-like putti flying nearby in this horizontal painting. The women take up most of the left half of the painting while the building behind them spans nearly three-quarters of the composition. A sliver of landscape is visible beyond the building to our right. Both women have dark, ash-brown hair wrapped back around diadems, long, straight noses, dark eyes, and smooth skin. Their cheeks are flushed, and their dark pink lips are parted. To our left, the first woman sits with her body facing our right in profile, and she turns to look at us from the corners of her eyes. Six silver stars line the sky-blue diadem in her hair. Her voluminous white shift falls off the shoulder closer to us, and she wears a swath of sapphire-blue drapery over her other arm and lap. One foot, wearing a yellow sandal, emerges from under the hem of her robe. She leans the elbow closer to us on a silver sphere, which comes a bit higher than her waist. Her other hand rests on the shoulder of the woman next to her. The second woman sits with her legs angled to our right, and she turns her face back to look at the first woman. She wears a butter-yellow garment under a rose-pink toga, and one foot, wearing a blue sandal, rests on the dirt ground. A baby-blue ribbon is tied through her hair, around a gold coronet. Her hands rest on a book in her lap. The partial word “odiss” is written along the edges of the pages facing us. Three pudgy angels with small blue wings flutter near the second woman, to our right. The putti have short, brown or blond, curly hair. Sashes in golden yellow, pink, or blue are tied around one shoulder and their opposite hips. They hold up three crowns of leaves. The building immediately behind the women and putti is parchment white streaked with brown. A tall foundation supports two columns, the base of which are near the top edge of the painting. A few plants grow out of the crevices, and a bush with white and light blue flowers grows behind the woman in blue, to our left. A landscape extends into the distance to our right, with rolling green hills, trees, and far-off, ice-blue mountains along the horizon. The sky above has apricot-peach and gray clouds against a pale blue sky.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/ec3850a9-280f-43b9-8e31-95f7393eef21/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
In 1627 Louis XIII called Vouet to Paris to become his chief artist. His work changed considerably to satisfy the tastes of the French king. The Muses Urania and Calliope, for example, is idealized and suffused with light.
Simon Vouet and Studio, The Muses Urania and Calliope, c. 1634, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.61
![A young woman with pale skin sits at a table in a darkened room in this vertical painting. Long chestnut-brown hair drapes over her shoulder and her deep, cream-colored, long-sleeved garment is open at her neck. She rests her chin in her right hand, farther from us, as her left reaches for a skull placed on a thick book on the table in front of her. The scene is lit by a single candle mostly out of sight behind the skull. Shown in profile, she looks into a small mirror next to the skull, which reflects that object and the book.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/e09726b3-80e9-4f7a-83fc-81a5122df494/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Georges de la Tour, one of the few important seventeenth-century French artists who did not visit Rome, was another follower of Caravaggio. He developed his unique and powerful style by studying the prints and paintings of Caravaggio’s many international followers.
La Tour’s The Repentant Magdalen shows Mary Magdalen by candlelight contemplating human mortality. Mary Magdalen was a popular saint in the seventeenth century. She had led a life of sin before converting to Christianity, and her story lent itself to the gritty reality that so many artists favored.
Georges de La Tour, The Repentant Magdalen, c. 1635/1640, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1974.52.1
![Five pale-skinned men gather around a rectangular table playing cards and dice against a dark, smoke-gray background in this horizontal painting. Light illuminates the scene dramatically from the upper left, creating bright areas and deep shadows. The two men closest to us play cards. One sits on our side of the table and faces our left in profile, wearing a gleaming, dark, armored breastplate and sleeves over scarlet-red tights. He has a dark brown beard and short, dark hair. He holds his stacked playing cards close to his chest, and he pulls the front one up with a forefinger and thumb as he looks at the man across from him. The young man near the left edge of the composition faces our right, almost in profile, as he half-kneels on his seat. He leans over the table, propped on one elbow. His other hand, closer to us, brushes the underside of his chin as he looks down at his cards. His right cheek and ear are brightly lit and much of the rest of his face cast into dark shadow, though there is a faint suggestion of a goatee around his parted lips. He wears a floppy, feathered cap, a bronze-brown shirt with full sleeves, and dark breeches over gray stockings. A bearded man with a tanned complexion stands behind the young man to our left. He looks toward the other end of the table at the dice players, and holds up a hand with two fingers extended. He wears a pointed metal helmet and holds a tall wooden staff with his other hand, along the left side of the canvas. Wrinkles line his forehead and create creases around his open mouth. Opposite us, two men look down at two small dice on the table. One man stands at the short end of the table to our right, with his right fingertips resting on the table over the dice. He wears a floppy, feathered cap over dark hair, and his brown beard is trimmed. His dark eyebrows are lowered and he has a long, straight nose. His ivory-white shirt has vertical black stripes and shimmers in the light. A metal collar, a piece of armor, rests around his neck and his hips are wrapped in a charcoal-gray cloth before being lost in the shadows under the table. In front of him, seen between the two card players, the fifth man faces the other dice player, leaning with his right hand on the table and holding up his other hand, palm out and fingers outstretched. His shoulder is bare where his cream-colored shirt has slipped down, and he wears a ruby-red, slashed, floppy hat. The light illuminates the back of his shoulder and side of his face, and the rest of his face is shrouded in shadow but we can see his mouth is open.](https://media.nga.gov/iiif/cbcf2fc9-cd57-4132-a2f8-89ede31cfe1a/full/!740,560/0/default.jpg)
Valentin was one of Caravaggio’s greatest followers. Dramatic lighting, quick brushwork, and earthy characters express the drama and emotion of his secular and religious subjects.
By the late 1620s, Valentin was receiving commissions from prominent patrons. He painted scenes of contemporary lowlife, religious subjects, allegories, and portraits. From 1629, he is referred to in documents as “Signor Valentino” and apparently employed servants in his house. His career was cut short, however. He purportedly led a bohemian life and finished a night of carousing with a dip in a fountain. He caught a chill and died at the age of forty-one. About seventy-five of his paintings survive today.
Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats), c. 1618/1620, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.104.1