Caravaggio's The Cardsharps shows a well-dressed boy losing at cards to two men who are working together. It is a scene of deception and lost innocence, painted in Rome in the mid-1590s, early in the artist's career, and it is the picture that made his first great patron take notice.
The game is primero, an ancestor of poker. Caravaggio painted the moment just before the boy loses, and let gesture and glance carry the plot.
Cool Stories About Art is a newsletter to learn art the fun way.
Join 200,000+ readers and get:
10 new art stories / month
The entire archive of content (1,000+ articles)
Comment, ask questions, and chat with other readers
The cheating the boy cannot see
The boy is absorbed in his hand, and almost everything that matters happens behind him. The older cheat's gloves leave the fingertips bare so that he can feel marked cards. He looks over the boy's shoulder to read the hand, and raises one gloved hand to signal his accomplice.
At the right, the younger cheat looks toward the boy and reaches behind his back for a card hidden in his breeches. The boy sees none of it. The viewer sees all of it, because Caravaggio placed the cheating where its victim, the mark, cannot look.
A dagger sits within reach at the young cheat's side. If the trick fails, the game will not end with an apology, and the picture says so without a word. Someone in Rome looked at this scene of petty crime and wanted it for his own walls.
What You'll Discover
Who bought a picture of a swindle.
Where the original disappeared for ninety years.
The second Cardsharps, sold as a copy.
What the judge left undecided.