The Cardsharps

Caravaggio
The Cardsharps, 1594, Michelangelo Caravaggio
By REID GUEMMER

Carvaggio, an unmatchable talent of the Italian renaissance, had an exceptional yet short lived career. He clearly mastered portraying emotions. No matter the scene his characters all carry out the intended reaction perfectly. He creates the composure by manipulating the facial muscles of his characters. Specifically the man in the far back of the painting with forehead creases draws my attention. The characters are overlapped creating a circular motion around the scene, especially through their eyes.

By portraying emotions so well, Caravaggio is also able to represent the evil in the world through the petty crime. Typically done through violence, this is an unusual scene for Caravaggio to paint. During this point in his career Caravaggio was working to become an independent artist. In The Cardsharps, Caravaggio portrays a man being cheated out of a card game in one of his more colorful works. Perhaps Caravaggio was portraying his excitement about his advancement as an artist while experimenting with ways to show the evil in the world without gore.
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Know Your Chapeau: The Cardsharps

Caravaggio
Caravaggio, The Cardsharps,  1594

Why did hats ever go out of style? They're great for everything. Balding? Hat. Sunburnt? Hat. Bad hair day? Hat. Want to advertise the fact that You Only Live Once? Stick on a stylish hat and you're good! Everyone cool, ever, wore a hat. My personal favorite is the Italian Hunters hat, also called the Archer's hat or the "Robin Hood," shown here in Caravaggio's The Cardsharps. There is no better hat for your cheating in card game needs! The stylish band goes great with your dagger, and is perfectly sized for an ace of spades!

While the this hat goes great with the striped jerkin, it wasn't as fashionable as you might think. This hat was mainly reserved for Italy's middle class. This suggests that while the wearer seems to be wealthy enough, as the jerkin and dagger would have been fairly expensive, he was not a part of Italian high society. The older gentleman stealing a look at the other boy's cards suggests that this isn't the first time he's made money this way.

I love this painting. All of the paintings from this time period seem to be either religious scenes, or stuffy upper class gentleman and women frowning in portraits. This one shows a lower-class cheater stealing money and rocking a hat. Caravaggio doesn't need your conventions, he paints what he wants...thank you very much.

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