Les Tricheurs

In January 1594 Caravaggio walked out of the workshop where he'd been grinding out flowers and fruit for another painter, and started trying to make it on his own in Rome. This is one of the first things he sold. A well-dressed young man studies his cards, not noticing that the boy across the table is being fed signals, while a second cardsharp reads his hand over his shoulder and reaches back for a hidden card at his belt. Look at that cheat's gloves, the fingertips cut away so he can feel the marked deck. A cardinal named Francesco Maria del Monte saw it, bought it, and gave Caravaggio rooms in his palace, which is how a broke young painter suddenly had a patron and a future. The painting then vanished for most of a century and turned up again in a private collection in Zurich in 1987, which is the year it came here to Fort Worth.