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Diego Velázquez, Joseph's Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob, 1630 oil on canvas, Monastery of San, Lorenzo, El Escorial,  Spain, 87 3/4 x 98 3/8 in.  wikipedia image Cheating card players and fortune tellers by Caravaggio and Georges de la Tour are among the best-known paintings of deception .   Two extraordinary Velázquez paintings completed in 1630, The Forge of Vulcan and Joseph's Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob , above, are also allegories of deception from the Baroque period of art.  Although a Biblical painting and a mythological painting would not seem connected, the canvasses match in height, format and the number of figures, six each.  The painting of Jacob and sons has been cut at either end, while the other image has added canvas to the left.  Both paintings have large window openings onto landscapes on their left sides.  There are only male figures, many of them scantily dressed to show the artist's extraordinary ability at depicting muscles of...

Valentin de Boulogne, Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice, c. 1618/20 A magnificent exhibition of Caravaggio and His Followers at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Wort h features the Washington National Gallery of Art's Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice by Valentin de Boulogne. The painting tells a story of deception. Caravaggi o had also painted Card Sharks with fewer figures. Boulogne, a Frenchman working in Rome, may have known of his composition. Boulogne's painting is a tight, close-up composition with masterfully chosen areas of ligh t. Two simultaneous episodes are taking place: dice throwing on the right and cheating card players on the left. The card sharks are the first to demand our attention, as they look startlingly real. Behind the central fig u re, who is in the process of cheating, a nother drama is happening. A man on the r ight l ooks down and covers his dice, perhaps hiding something while his adversary with the red hat seems about to erupt in anger. Although ...