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Two boys are playing cards together. The young man on the right, however, is a card sharp.
He has tucked some extra cards in his belt, behind his back, and thanks to his older accomplice,
who's signaling him the cards of the innocent guy, he's trying to win this game by cheating.
I think that what makes this Caravaggio's painting – today part of the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum
in Fort Worth, Texas – a real masterpiece is the association between – on one side – the artificial light,
extremely studied for the composition of the painting – and, on the other side, the rude realism, that we notice
for example, in the split fingers on the older man's gloves – and the implicit violence of the image
well represented by the stagger at the card sharp's side. Not to mention the extreme ability of Caravaggio
in representing the psychology of human beings, like the innocence of the dupe or
a certain anxiety that we perceive in the young cheater guy.