Art Collage JANG: Interesting Art Stories: 57. The Cardsharps, Caravaggio, ACJ Art Academy

How are you?

Currently, I am introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the title “Interesting Art Stories”.

The 57th story is “The Cardsharps” by Caravaggio.

“The Cardsharps” is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio around 1594.

Portrait of Caravaggio, Ottavio Leoni
(c. 1621)

It is believed that he painted more than one version of this painting, but the work in the Kimbell Art Museum is generally accepted as the original.

Kimbell Art Museum

Caravaggio painted the painting while he was trying to pursue his own independent career, after leaving the workshop of the Cavaliere Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino, for whom he had been painting flowers and fruit.

Portrait engraving of Giuseppe Cesari,
Ottavio Leoni (1621)

After leaving Cesari’s workshop in January 1594, he began selling his works through the art dealer Costantino, with the help of Mannerist painter Prospero Orsi. Orsi also introduced Caravaggio to his extensive network of art collectors and patrons.

The painting shows a boy dressed in expensive clothes but looking unworldly playing cards with another boy. The second boy, a cardsharp, is hiding his extra cards in his belt behind his back and has a dagger around his waist. A man, older than the two boys, is peering over the innocent boy's cards and signaling to his accomplice, the second boy.

The painting was the second such painting by Caravaggio. The first painting, “The Fortune Teller,” drew public attention, and the second painting, “The Cardsharps,” contributed to expanding his reputation. Combining realism for depicting the lives of the miserable lower classes with luminous Venetian delicacy, the painting has received much acclaim.

The Fortune Teller, first version, Caravaggio, Musei
Capitolini, Rome (c.1594)

The Fortune Teller, second version, Caravaggio,
Louvre, Paris (c. 1595)

Caravaggio came to the attention of Cardinal Francesco Del Monte, a famous art collector who purchased the painting and became his first important patron.

Portrait of Cardinal Francesco Maria del
Monte, Ottavio Leoni

He provided Caravaggio with lodging in his Palazzo Madama, behind the Piazza Navona, now one of the principal squares in Rome.

Palazzo Madama

Then, the painting became the collection of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, nephew of the Pope Urban VIII (the figure in Caravaggio's "Portrait of Maffeo Barberini" in 1598). It disappeared in the 1890s and was rediscovered in a private collection in Zürich in 1987, and subsequently became the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Antonio Barberini, Simone Cantarini (1630)

Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, Caravaggio
(c. 1598)

The British art historian Denis Mahon bought a copy of the painting at an auction in 2006. Although Sotheby's sold the painting as a copy painted by an artist other than Caravaggio, Mahon claimed the painting was a replica by Caravaggio.

His claim is persuasive in that Caravaggio painted more than one version in his other paintings, including “Boy Bitten by a Lizard”, “The Fortune Teller”, and “The Lute Player”.