Gypsies were among the most frequently depicted minorities in the early modern period, often represented through fortune-telling. Archival sources reveal how such images reflected anxieties in ecclesiastical and secular debates, while artists such as Jacques Callot, Caravaggio, and Nicolas Régnier highlighted recurring motifs, fortune-telling, children, distinctive dress, theft. From the mid-17th century, inquisitors and Counter-Reformation confessors scrutinised Gypsy women’s practices, linking palmistry to theft, illicit sexuality, and superstition. Confessional manuals and inquisitorial texts ranged from heretical condemnation to trivialisation as ridiculas divinationes.
Produced within male, ecclesiastical, and secular frameworks, these discourses crystallised stereotypes that spread from Italy to Spain, France, and beyond. Yet Gypsy women were not merely passive recipients. Divination and mobility served as strategies of survival, enabling them to negotiate reputations that shifted between fear, exotic allure, and devotional ambiguity. By combining artistic, literary, and judicial sources, this study shows that the image of the Gypsy woman was not only imposed but also internalised, contested, and reinterpreted, shedding light on the circulation of stereotypes and the cultural construction of marginality.
Maria Gloria Tumminelli is a cultural historian and her research focuses on migration and diaspora studies, with attention to identity, integration, and circulation of ideas and stereotypes. She’s currently Marie Curie Post-Doc Research Fellow at University of Cambridge and Reviews Editor of Cerae: Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She holds a Ph.D (University of Pavia) in Society, Politics and Institutions in Early Modern and Contemporary Age, with a thesis regarding the Gypsy Diaspora in the Spanish Empire. A recent publication is: “Refugees or Public Thieves? The Gitanos and the Right of Asylum in Churches in Habsburg Spain,” in Visible Strangers: Early Modern Urban Identities, Social Visibility and the Mediterranean Paradigm (16th–18th centuries), edited by Viviana Tagliaferri, Manchester University Press, September 2025.
