The £42,000 Caravaggio copy that might actually be a £10m original

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2014/oct/27/caravaggio-copy-that-might-be-original

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Full name: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Age: Died in 1610, aged 38.

Bit of a lad, wasn’t he? The original enfant terrible. Makes the Chapman Brothers look angelic.

Not someone the Today programme would want to interview then? It would be a guaranteed Caravaggio crash.

Hellraising highlights: He was involved in numerous drunken brawls in taverns; had frequent run-ins with the police in Rome, where he lived in his 20s; and once threw a plate of artichokes at a waiter. Oh, and there was the little matter of stabbing a young man to death in 1606.

An artistic disagreement? Probably a fight over a woman.

But I thought he was gay. That was Derek Jarman’s take in his 1986 film. The evidence points both ways, as Caravaggio himself probably did.

Freudian interpretation for both his disordered life and his obsession with grisly subjects, especially decapitation … Many of his family died in an outbreak of bubonic plague when he was six, leaving him fatherless, homeless and rootless.

Have many of his paintings survived? Some experts put the figure as low as 80. Others say up to 300. Fresh claims are being made all the time.

Which must be why you are sketching his life. Thank you. I was wondering how to work that in. There’s currently a battle in the high court over a painting called The Cardsharps, which was sold by Sotheby’s in 2006 for £42,000. The auction house said it was a copy by a “follower” of Caravaggio, but the buyer – an expert on the artist – immediately claimed it was by the master and worth £10m. The seller, the splendidly named Lancelot Thwaytes, is now suing Sotheby’s.

Who’s right? Hard to say. The original was painted in 1594 and is on show in a museum in Texas. It was a key work in establishing Caravaggio’s reputation, was hugely popular and endlessly copied. But it’s possible he made another version himself, as he sometimes did. There are three almost identical authenticated versions of The Lute Player.

Why do three? A love of the lute? More likely the loot.

Most likely to say: “Nec spe, nec metu” (“Without hope, without fear” – the motto of the streetwise artists with whom Caravaggio lived after he was orphaned).

Least likely to say: “I think I’ll have a quiet night in doing a nice watercolour.”