(Milan 1571–1610 Porto Ercole)
The Cardsharps, the card trick,
oil on canvas, 96.5 x 125 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Northern Italy

Literature:
M. Marini, Io, Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Rome 1974, p. 471, R-15 (mentioned), illustrated (as Pensionante del Saraceni)

The work represents two youths preparing to play a bout of cards; the one kneeling on the left reveals with satisfaction some cards hidden in the white shirt on the ground, as the latter raises his arms in mock surprise. This painting is the pendant to lot 313 with which it shares a humble setting, the presence of two ‘street urchins’, as well as a close-cropped composition and overall earth tones. On account of these typical characteristics, the work is to be dated to about the second decade of the seventeenth century, as the product of an artist in the ambit of Caravaggio.

This painting was first published by Maurizio Marini in 1974, along with its pendant, with an attribution to the so-called ‘Pensionante del Saraceni’, an anonymous artist active around the second decade of the seventeenth century, and given this name by Roberto Longhi on account of the close stylistic similarities he identified with the works of the Venetian, Carlo Saraceni.

In the present painting, as in its pendent, the theme of cards predominates, but in this case the subject is handled in an unusual fashion compared to the numerous variants on the theme first introduced by Caravaggio in the Cardsharps at Fort Worth. The iconography of card players was extensively used by Merisi’s followers, both as a principal subject for their works and as a marginal theme in their larger compositions of religious subject. In the former, the action of the bout was always the principal subject, and was frequently characterised by the presence of a cheat, as in Caravaggio’s prototype. In the present painting, however, the moment before play is due to commence is seemingly immortalised: the two youths apparently celebrate the recovery of some cards, which one might think had been stolen by the young accomplices. The humble setting of the scene and social status of the two youths point to the popular context most typical of works from the ambit of Caravaggio during the early decades of the seventeenth century, but the choice of this particular subject makes this picture quite unusual within this milieu at the time.