Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), “The Cardsharps” (c. 1596–97), oil on canvas. Credit: Kimbell Art Museum
Art historian Richard Spear will deliver this year’s Mary Atkins Lecture, titled “Caravaggio and His ‘Cardsharps’ on Trial,” Sept. 4 in Atkins Auditorium.
Spear, professor emeritus at Oberlin College and affiliate research professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, will discuss the work and life of popular painter Caravaggio (1571–1610), as well as the trial and controversy surrounding the painter’s famous work “Cardsharps.”
“The talk opens with an overview of Caravaggio’s tempestuous career. It then probes the popularity of his work, from exhibitions to film to trinkets, and why a ‘Caravaggiomania’ has occurred,” according to a statement provided by Atkins Trustee Michael Fields. “The final section focuses on a trial in which Sotheby’s was sued over the attribution of a version of Caravaggio’s famous ‘Cardsharps,’ a story told from the inside by an expert witness that involves connoisseurship, laboratory evidence and art law.”
This year’s Mary Atkins Lecture celebrates the museum’s reinstallation of Caravaggio’s “Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness,” now returned from an exhibition at Rome’s Palazzo Barberini. Admission is $12 for members, $15 for the public and $8 for students. For more information, visit www.nelson-atkins.org.
