Portraits of Gambling: The Cardsharps

Gambling has been around for as long as human beings can remember. Kings and paupers alike have indulged in this pastime for centuries. It is a part of life, and gambling has been featured in many of the great works of art and literature of Western world. Card games, for example, have been around for centuries as well. One of the favorites in today's casinos, poker, has evolved from a number of different kinds of card games. One of those ancestral games is primeria, an Italian card game that was no doubt the subject matter of a great work of art: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's The Cardsharps.

The Cardsharps is an oil painting on canvas, painted circa 1594. The painting consists of three people: two teenage boys and an older man. One of the two boys is expensively but simply dressed. He faces the viewer, looking at his cards intently. The other boy appears to be a little worldlier, and has his back to the viewer. The two boys are playing cards against one another, and the older man peeks over the first boy's shoulder.

Today, a cardsharp is sometimes also called a card shark. By definition, a cardsharp is someone who is skilled at playing cards. The term "cardsharp" is also sometimes used to define a person who practices card tricks to entertain other people. It can also mean someone who uses deception to win at such card games as Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha, and 52 Pickup. This slightly negative definition may have been the basis for Caravaggio's painting's title.

In the painting, the boy with his back to the viewer has some extra cards in his belt, as well as a dagger, anticipating violence. The well-dressed boy is clearly a dupe for the other two characters of the painting. The older man is looking at the richer boy's cards and signalling the other boy.

This painting is one of Caravaggio's first independently made works. It marks an important milestone in his career. At the time, images depicting such mundane scenes were not something that most artists normally painted, and because of it and his other similar works, Caravaggio's popularity rose. Many other painters created copies and variants of this painting. Its subject matter was something entirely new for the time: it renders, in realistic detail, a street scene, possibly taken from real life.

It is proof that in its many forms, gambling has been a part of people's lives throughout history.