Caravaggio's Cardsharps

About this book

"The Cardsharps, one of the paintings that launched Caravaggio's spectacular career in Rome, captured the turbulent social reality of the city in the 1590s. This early masterpiece not only documented one of the everyday activities of Rome's citizens, but its vivid, lifelike style also opened the door to a revolutionary naturalism that would spread throughout Europe.Helen Langdon, the scholar whose illuminating Caravaggio: A Life became a best-seller, returns to her subject and his milieu in this new, richly illustrated volume. She sets Caravaggio's Cardsharps within the context of contemporaneous literature, art theory, and theater and incorporates new archival research to enliven our understanding of the painter's time, place, and contemporaries. By fully analyzing one of Caravaggio's most daringly novel works, Langdon demonstrates the significant influence he had on the future of European art"-- "Caravaggio's Cardsharps: Trickery and Illusion, written for the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, brings to vivid life the turbulent social reality of Caravaggio's Rome, creating a strong sense of place and time and providing lively vignettes of his patrons, friends, and rivals. The accompanying illustrations--maps, photographs of inns and palaces, portraits, and images taken from printed books and archives--evoke the people and sites of Rome in the 1590s and highlight the unique role The Cardsharps played in launching Caravaggio's spectacular career. At the same time, the book sets the daring novelty of the painting in the context of contemporaneous painting, art theory, literature, and theater. It traces the origins of Caravaggio's lifelike style and everyday subject matter to the art of his native Lombardy, in northern Italy, and explores how radical these were when compared to the idealizing art of Rome. It also explores, more fully than has previously been done, the painting's relationship to traditions of the picaresque and rogue culture. The painting played a seminal role in the creation of a revolutionary naturalism both in Italy and throughout Europe, and the final sections of the book are devoted to copyists and to the picture's influence on later artists"--