Early 'Card Sharps' by Caravaggio on display for first time
ROME (AFP) — A priceless Caravaggio once attributed to a "follower" of the Italian Baroque master went on public display for the first time on Saturday at a Sicilian museum.
"The Card Sharps," authenticated as a Caravaggio after British art collector and historian Sir Denis Mahon bought it at a Sotheby's auction in 2006 for 50,400 pounds, is now thought to be worth up to 50 million pounds (70 million euros, 100 million dollars).
The painting is an early version of a 1594 work by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio now displayed at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The exhibit celebrating 400 years since the troubled painter's brief stay in Sicily opened first in Malta, but without the "The Card Sharps."
Celebrated for his dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow) paintings, Caravaggio was equally theatrical in life, and one of the many brawls he was notorious for ended in the death of a young adversary in Rome, Ranuccio Tomassoni, in 1606.
With a price on his head, Caravaggio fled to Malta, where in 1608 he was involved in another brawl, after which he fled to Sicily.
The following year, in Naples, he survived another brawl that may have been a deliberate attempt on his life.
He died in 1610, aged 38.
The show, "Caravaggio, Images of the Divine," runs until March 30 at the Museo Regionale conte Agostino Pepoli in Trapani, western Sicily.
