Der Falschspieler mit dem Karo-Ass

A rich young man on the right has sat down to a game of cards, and he is about to lose everything. Look at the player on the far left. He has slipped an ace of diamonds out from behind his belt, and he is turning it toward us, so we are in on the trick and the victim is not. The servant pouring wine and the woman glancing sideways are part of it too. La Tour worked in Lorraine in the 1630s, a duchy being torn apart by the Thirty Years' War, and paintings like this carried a plain warning to young men of means about the three snares of the world, gambling, wine, and women. He painted the same scene twice. In the other version, at Fort Worth, the hidden card is an ace of clubs.