While an old gypsy crone tells his fortune, a naive youth is robbed by her accomplices, a subject popular among Caravaggesque painters throughout Europe in the seventeenth century. La Tour's painting can be interpreted as a genre or theatrical scene, or as an allusion to the parable of the prodigal son. It has been variously dated from about 1620 to as late as 1639. The inscription includes the name of the town where La Tour lived, Lunéville in Lorraine.

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