Caravaggio's lost 'Card Sharps'?
October 27 2014
Picture: The Art Newspaper
As the old saying goes, Caravaggio attribution stories are like London buses...
Hot on the heels of last week's news that Caravaggio scholar Mina Gregori has, she claims, found Caravaggio's lost 'Penitent Magdalene', we have today another Caravaggio attribution case, this time in the High Court in London.
Regular readers will probably be familiar with the tale of a disputed version of Caravaggio's 'Card Sharps', (above) which sold at Sotheby's in London for £42,000 in 2006 as 'Follower of Caravaggio'. It was bought by the renowned collector and Caravaggio scholar, the late Sir Denis Mahon, who promptly declared that it was in fact by Caravaggio himself, being an autograph replica of a picture in the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas. As such, it would be worth in the region of £10m. Mahon's opinion was endorsed by Mina Gregori.
Sotheby's, however, stuck to their guns, and said that the picture absolutely wasn't by Caravaggio, and cited their own experts. Vested interests all round, I hear you say...
Today, a long-threatened court case about the picture begins in the High Court. The vendor in 2006, Lancelot Thwaytes, is suing Sotheby's, claiming that they should have spotted the fact that it was by Caravaggio. He wants compensation to reflect the fact that he did in fact own a Caravaggio.
The case promises to be a battle of the experts, reports the Independent:
Sotheby’s has robustly countered the claims and said that the version it sold was “clearly inferior” in quality to the original painting in the Texas gallery. In the 2006 sale catalogue, Sotheby’s listed it as being by a “follower of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio”.
“The Kimbell Cardsharps was painted by Caravaggio with the striking virtuosity and realism for which his early works are famous,” according to papers filed by the auction house. “The quality of execution on display in the painting falls far short of the Kimbell original.”
It said that it would not have consulted any of the experts cited by Mr Thwaytes as leading Caravaggio scholars and said that its own team was competent to judge that it was a copy.
The experts cited by Mr Thwaytes included Mina Gregori, an author of several books on Caravaggio, who claimed last week to have solved a centuries-old mystery by identifying a previously unknown work in a private collection as a Caravaggio. Other experts Mr Thwaytes claims have backed the painting as a genuine Caravaggio include the director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci.
So who is right? If the court decides against the attribution, should we view this as context for Mina Gregori's recent Magdalene discovery? If Sotheby's loses, what does it mean for their reputation?
Either way, I feel rather sorry for the judges. Attribution is a notoriously difficult thing to prove in a court of law, for judges and juries are of often wholly unfamiliar with the rubric of art history, to say nothing of connoisseurship.* Other factors can come to the fore. For example, some readers may be familiar with the story of Joseph Duveen losing a libel case in the United States, when he said that a copy of Leonardo's 'La Belle Ferroniere' was not by Leonardo, despite the fact that he was absolutely right. It seems the jury's decision was influenced by a stuffy English art dealer criticising the plucky US owner.
Anyway, this particular case throws up all sorts of related questions. For example, when Sir Denis Mahon died, his Card Sharps must have posed all difficulties for his heir, since for inheritance tax purposes it was 'worth' millions. And yet, having potentially paid millions in tax, it is likely that the heir might have found the picture impossible to sell, for it may be that 'the market's' view would be that the picture is not by Caravaggio. Indeed, is it possible that fellow scholars endorsed Mahon's attribution largely out of feelings of friendship? Mahon was a giant of the art world, but also at that time an aged collector who, it turns out, was asset rich (in terms of the pictures he had very generously promised to bequeath to the National Gallery and other institutions) but cash poor. And so on and so forth.
By the way, if readers detect an unusual reticence in any of the above, it's mainly because I don't want to be called as a witness...
*At this point, of course, critics of connoisseurship say - 'Aha! Attribution by connoisseurship is always impossible to prove'. To which the answer is... well, I haven't got time.
