He wanted to make art attainable to the average person. He wanted the average person to connect to his pieces and the only real way to do that, is to show the truth. Caravaggio wanted to tell the true story of his subjects. He did not want to idealize the truth like the classical works did. Bellori was known to have preferred the classical style. Caravaggio had some form of imagination in order to place the models as well as ingrain that drama that he and the baroque time period is oh so famous for into his paintings. Caravaggio would influence many artists to come with his strong use of depth and light. In fact, if you look at some of today’s works and what todays art will strive for, one could argue that you can see his influence in it. The…show more content… The The Cardsharps was so popular that it inspired many other paintings on related themes across Europe, one of these just so happens to also reside in the Kimbell. It is Georges de La Tour’s Cheat with the Ace of Clubs (See figure 3) (Kimbell Art Foundation). De La Tour was a French artist who lived from 1593 to 1652. He was most likely influenced in his early years as an artist by Caravaggio’s Dutch followers. In fact, his paintings tend to bare a very strong resemblance to Caravaggio’s with the extremely strong light and dark contrast. However, as de La Tour grew as an artist, his works were not as dramatic as Caravaggio’s. Cheat with the Ace of Clubs has several similarities to Caravaggio’s The Cardsharps. The man with the cards tucked in behind his back. The maidservant who has looked at the innocent man’s cards and telling the other member of the cards. The interaction with the audience is not exactly the same, but a similar effect is given. In de La Tour’s, the audience is brought into the situation by the man who is glancing towards the viewer and tilting his cards in their direction making the audience an almost accomplice to the situation. Whereas Caravaggio’s there is no looking at the viewer and the viewer is brought into the scene…show more content… It would be purchased by a member of the Barberini family, Cardinal Antonio Barberini in 1628. It would stay in the Barberini family, and partially the Sciarra family, until 1895. After this, the painting’s whereabouts become lost. The painting would be found in a private collection in Europe after almost ninety years. It would then be purchased by the Kimbell Art Foundation in 1987. It now currently sits in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (Kimbell Art Foundation).
The painting was found in an unclean state in Zurich by Mina Gregori. It was examined at Zurich by the director of the Kimbell Art Museum, Edmund Pillsbury who came to the same conclusion as Gregori, that the painting in fact was the missing Caravaggio (Mahon). The Cardsharps was exhibited by the Metropolitan Museum of Art after it was acquired by the Kimbell and was cleaned and restored in its time there (Christiansen).
The Cardsharps is a highly important painting for Caravaggio. One can almost credit it with the launch of his career in Rome and therefore the launch of his legacy for the art world. The Cardsharps’s may not show one of his common traits to the fullest extent, the use of light to create drama, but none the less shows the beginning of his great talent that would only grow with time. The Cardsharps will go down in history as the launching pad for the career of, what some might say, the most influential artist