Giochi di carte, inganni e cortigiane: Caravaggio e gli olandesi

This short text centres on the Caravaggio's secular paint, The gamblers, (Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum) exerted a fascination on his Dutch followers. Too often the critics have gotten rid of Flemish caravaggesques with generic simplism as mere emulators of the most superficial aspects of the Lombard Master's art. If we briefly analyse the subject of the game of cards in figurative arts since northern engraving through the work of Lucas van Leyden, Bosch, Bruegel and more. We demonstrate how northern caravaggesques recognise in Caravaggio forms and contents are related to their sensitivity and they take possession of them, altering them through a very strong netherlandish lens, which cannot be renounced. After and perhaps through the mysterious character of Bartolomeo Manfredi, after ter Brugghen, especially Dirck van Baburen and Gerrit van Honthorst put the variant of "woman" as perpetrator or accomplice of the fraud on their portrayals of players. They reverse the figurative Italian universe usually anthropocentric, beyond the sphere of good and evil.