the theme. Provenance Whether through Costantino or Orsi, Caravaggio came to the notice of the prominent collector Cardinal Francesco Del Monte, who purchased Cardsharps and became the artist's first important patron, giving him lodgings in his Palazzo Madama behind the Piazza Navona, then as now one of the principal squares in Rome. From Del Monte's collection the work entered the collection of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, nephew of the Pope Urban VIII (whose pre-elevation portrait, Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, Caravaggio would paint in 1598), in Rome and was passed through the Colonna-Sciarra family. It eventually disappeared in the 1890s, and was rediscovered in 1987 in a private collection in Zürich; it was subsequently sold to and is currently in the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The British art historian Sir Denis Mahon acquired a copy of Cardsharps at auction in 2006. Although it had been sold by Sotheby's as being a copy of the work in the Kimbell Art Museum and by an artist other than Caravaggio, Mahon argued that it was a replica by Caravaggio himself. There is a pentimento, in which full detail of the face of one of the cheats had been sketched in spite of being painted over by the page's hat. This suggests that it is unlikely that it was done by a copy artist. The attribution of this version to Caravaggio has been widely accepted, although as of 2014 it is the subject of a legal dispute. This suggests that Caravaggio might have painted at least two versions of the work, as he is believed to have done with Boy Bitten by a Lizard, The Fortune Teller, and The Lute Player. Mahon died in 2011 and the painting had been loaned to London's Museum of the Order of St. John and insured for £10,000,000. On 16 January 2015 the High Court of England and Wales ruled in favor of Sotheby's, saying that, relying on qualified experts, Sotheby's had reasonably come to the view that the painting was not likely a Caravaggio; the judge consequently ordered the plaintiff to pay Sotheby's £1.8 million for its legal fees. See also List of paintings by Caravaggio Further reading Jürgen Müller: Betrogene Betrüger. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggios "Die Falschspieler" als Metamalerei, in: Kunstchronik, 73. Jahrgang, Heft 9/10 (2020), pp. 501–510. References External links A Caravaggio Rediscovered, The Lute Player, an exhibition catalog from The