Controversial Caravaggio to be unveiled in London

A controversial Caravaggio that belonged to the late collector and scholar Denis Mahon is due to be unveiled in April at the Museum of the Order of St John in London. Although the rest of Mahon’s 58 Italian Baroque paintings have been bequeathed to UK public collections, the long-term future of The Cardsharps is uncertain, because of the question of attribution.

The Cardsharps came up for sale at Sotheby’s, London in 2006, ascribed to a 17th-century “follower” of the artist and estimated at between £20,000 and £30,000. Mahon bought it for £50,400 (the hammer price was £42,000), believing it to be by the master. The seller, Lancelot William Thwaytes, is now taking legal action against Sotheby’s because of its alleged misattribution, but the claim is being robustly rejected by the auction house. After Mahon acquired The Cardsharps he offered it on loan to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The museum was willing to accept it, but only if the label read “attributed to Caravaggio”, and this was rejected by him. Instead he lent the picture to Italy—to Trapani, Forlì and then Cento.

The Caravaggio attribution remains controversial. It is accepted by some key Italian scholars, including Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums, and Mina Gregori, a Florentine specialist. Others reject it, regarding it as a copy of the authentic version (around 1595), which is at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Sebastian Schütze, a professor of history of art at the University of Vienna, states in his recent catalogue raisonné that the quality of execution of the Mahon work “suggests the painting to be a copy”.

Mahon required that The Cardsharps should be on public view. The Museum of the Order of St John is an appropriate venue, since Caravaggio was a member of the Catholic order of the Knights of St John.