10 - Monetary Transactions and Pictorial Gambles in Georges de La Tour

Summary

Abstract:

Georges de La Tour's representations of monetary transactions are examined in his depictions of tax collection, gambling, and fortune telling scenes. But the financial and moral obligations involved in keeping books and settling debts are at variance with the vicarious risk and expenditure of money in games of fortune. These works encourage theological inquiry since questions of keeping or breaking faith or promise reference not just economic concerns but also moral and religious beliefs. La Tour's portrayals of deception, manipulation and betrayal in his financial and gambling scenes also invite scrutiny of his pictorial strategies and artistic gambles. Rife with references to their own making, his works question painting's credibility by putting its deceitful illusionism on trial.

Keywords: Prodigal Son, Unjust Steward, usury and time, fortunetelling, prophesy, pictorial self-awareness

Money plays a central role in Georges de La Tour's (1593-1652) depictions of scenes of payment of taxes or dues, gambling, and fortune telling. These paintings represent different kinds of transactions, since the financial obligations involved in keeping account books and settling debts are at variance with vicarious risks and expenditures of money in games of fortune. My analysis draws on Marcel Mauss’ seminal observation in “The Origins of the Notion of Money” (1914), that money is not merely a physical or material fact since its essence is socially defined. Its validation presupposes a form of faith that “is proportional to the degree of social commitment it generates,” as Marcel Hénaff noted in The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy. Indeed, as Karl Polanyi and Conrad M. Arensberg remind us, during the early modern period “the facts of the economy were originally embedded in situations that were not in themselves of an economic nature, neither the ends or the means being purely material.” An examination of monetary exchanges in La Tour's works invites theological inquiry, since issues of keeping or breaking faith or promise reference not just economic concerns but also moral and religious beliefs. Depictions of money lost and found and of wasteful expenditure as a matter of recklessness or beneficence set forth in economic parables of St. Luke's gospel will help guide and illuminate crucial theological aspects of La Tour's pictorial renderings.