1596
oil
canvas
From the collection of Kimbell Art Museum
The Cardsharps is a 1596 oil by Caravaggio, a Baroque work, depicting Card Game, held at Kimbell Art Museum.
The Cardsharps is a painting by Caravaggio. It's an oil paint work from around 1590. The painting is now held at the Kimbell Art Museum, which acquired it in 1987. There might be other versions, but this one is widely accepted as the original. Caravaggio may have made more than one version of this scene. You can learn more about the artist's style by looking up Caravaggio.
The Cardsharps (painted around 1594) is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio. The original is generally agreed to be the work acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum in 1987, although Caravaggio may have painted more than one version.
Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The work represents an important milestone for Caravaggio. He painted it when he was attempting an independent career after leaving the workshop of the Cavaliere Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino, for whom he had been painting "flowers and fruit", finishing the details for the Cavaliere's mass-produced (and massive) output. Caravaggio left Arpino's workshop in January 1594 and began selling works through the dealer Costantino, with the assistance of Prospero Orsi, an established painter of Mannerist grotesques. Orsi introduced Caravaggio to his extensive network of contacts in the world of collectors…
Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The painting shows an expensively-dressed but unworldly boy playing cards with another boy. The second boy, a cardsharp, has extra cards tucked in his belt behind his back, out of sight of the mark but not the viewer, and a sinister older man is peering over the dupe's shoulder and signaling to his young accomplice. The second boy has a dagger handy at his side. It was the second such painting Caravaggio created. The first, The Fortune Teller, had drawn attention, and this painting extended his reputation, small though it was at this stage. The subjects of The Fortune Teller and Cardsharps…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Source: wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (also Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi da Caravaggio; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life.
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