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102 <figcaption class="figure-caption text-right">The Cardsharps, 1594 by Caravaggio</figcaption> 103 </figure> 104 105 <p> 106 In <b>The Cardsharps</b>, all sights are fixed. Whatever's blocked from view, or turned away from view, is stuck that way. Nothing the viewer can do, nothing the picture can do, will show more, or less, of anything. But the limits 107 of an art can be its powers. 108 </p> 109 <p> 110 With this petty crime scene, Cardsharps, the young Caravaggio invented a genre of trickery pictures. The cast is minimal: two cheats and one dupe. The plot is simple but tight. One cheat plays cards with the boy. Another peeps at 111 the victim's hand, signals to his accomplice, who palms a concealed card from his belt. It's a deception tableau, a scenario borrowed from the comic stage, where looks are sneaked, things happen behind backs, and all before our eyes. 112 </p> 113 <p> 114 The scene was much imitated in 17th-century painting. But Caravaggio's version has one incident that nobody copies. It's the picture's hot spot, the bit where the older crook's right eye is precisely obscured, blocked out, almost 115 jabbed out, by the obtruding peak of the boy's black hat. 116 </p> 117 <p> 118 But it isn't a jab, it's an overlap. And it's one of those points where you're made to feel the fixity of a picture's view. The scene's staging won't let you see something you want to see. And to single out for concealment, of all 119 things, a boldly peering eye is especially frustrating. In the midst of its looking it is removed from our sight. It even seems to lose its own sight. The tuft of black hat, so neatly fitting over the eye, seems to lay a patch 120 upon it, to blind it. 121 </p> 122 <p> 123 The device gives a contrasting stress to the other eye. Isolated, exposed, this organ acquires a strange force - a wide-open, staring eyeball, in an avid, involuntary fixation. Its gaze seems to be out of control, and therefore 124 all the more sinful, criminal. And between them these two eyes, one hidden and one exposed, one unseeing and one peeping, manage to summarise the whole action of the picture. 125 </p> 126 <p> 127 See how precarious the overlap is. Cap and eye are in a precise alignment, a visual coincidence, which any slight movement among the two figures would break. 128 </p> 129 <p> 130 It pinpoints the precariousness of the whole occasion. It's a scene on tenterhooks, where any slight movement might give the trick away. The spy must lean and look and signal and, while the moment lasts, he mustn't do anything to 131 draw his victim's attention. The only-just-held position of cap and eye is the index of this tension. 132 </p> 133 <p> 134 The blocked eye can also connect to the two crucially unseeing eyes in the picture: the dupe's, lowered as he prudently, fatally, watches his cards to the exclusion of all else. And the overlapping hat can connect to the two 135 overlapping cards in his closely-guarded hand, the corner of one just barely peeping out behind the other - the cards that we can only see the backs of. 136 </p> 137 <p> 138 No party can see or know everything they might wish to. There are things that the viewer can't observe though the figures can, and things the figures can't observe and the viewer can. The scene is constructed as a circuit of 139 seeing and not-seeing, knowledge and ignorance, trust and deceit. The boy trusts in the invisibility of his cards. The cheats trust in the invisibility of their scheme. They must trust in their own alliance too. And something the 140 viewer can see suggests this trust may be misplaced. 141 </p> 142 <p> 143 It's like the precise overlap of cap and eye, which again only we see, but which has the whole picture in its grip. Neatly slotting, it locks the two heads together, freezes the figures in mid-action, puts them on hold. The scene
144 is arrested, caught red-handed. 145 </p> 146 147 </div> 148 </div> 149 </section><!-- End Content Section --> 150</main> 151 <!-- ======= carousel ======= --> 152 <div class='container'> 153 <div 154 id='carouselControls' 155 class='carousel carousel-dark slide' 156 data-bs-ride='carousel' 157 > 158 <div class='carousel-inner'> 159 <div class='carousel-item active'> 160 <div class='row gy-3'> 161 <div class='col-lg-3 d-flex justify-content-center'> 162 <div class='card'> 163 <a href='/the-incredulity-of-saint-thomas.jsp'> 164 <img 165 loading='lazy' 166 src='/assets/img/thumbs/the-incredulity-of-saint-thomas.jpg' 167 class='card-img-top' 168 alt='The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio' 169 /> 170 </a> 171 <div class='card-body'> 172 <a href='/the-incredulity-of-saint-thomas.jsp'> 173 <h6 class='card-title'>The Incredulity of Saint Thomas</h6> 174 </a> 175 </div> 176 </div> 177 </div> 178 179 <div class='col-lg-3 d-flex justify-content-center'> 180 <div class='card'> 181 <a 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