(Naples 1722–1770 Rome)
Card players,
oil on canvas, 73.5 x 98 cm, framed

Provenance:
art market, mid 2000s;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
G. Forgione, Gaspare Traversi, Soncino 2014, p. 200, no. A129, illustrated p. 139, pl. LXXVI

A consummate storyteller, Gaspare Traversi reflected the social dynamics of his era depicting scenes from everyday life, often lampooning the behaviour of the figures he depcited, as is apparent in the present painting.

A company has gathered around a table to play cards and the focus is on the lady on the right, dressed in yellow, who smiles as she plays a card. She is clearly heeding the advice of the old woman at her shoulder. Two of her companions, a young woman in blue and a young man in red are clearly aware that she is cheating. The young man appears affronted, while the young woman looks at her with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. Across the table, an older man remains engrossed in his own cards, smilingly oblivious to the underhand play taking place. The blatant dishonesty of the card player, tempted to cheat by the older woman behind her, casts doubt on the character’s value and as such imbibes the present composition with a moralising message.

Nicknamed the ‘Italian Hogarth’, Traversi abandoned the Baroque and Rococo mainstream of the eighteenth-century Neapolitan art, to return to the joyful, and often satirical tradition of worldly entertainment. His early style, which had much in common with that of the elderly Francesco Solimena to whom Traversi was apprenticed, later gave way to the influence of the naturalist painters of the previous generation: Caravaggio, Preti, Caracciolo, Ribera and Filippo Vitale, whose works he studied closely.

With his works, Traversi is visibly moving on the threshold of the new era of Enlightenment, in which the laws of the individual are slowly taking the place of clerical and feudal orders. He is interested in what can actually be observed in this world, in the colourful and sometimes quite coarse everyday life – a practice which gives his painting a timeless effect.