Valentin de Boulogne - Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats)[c.1618-20]

Valentin de Boulogne - Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats) [c.1618-20], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The subject of Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice is inspired by one of Caravaggio's most famous paintings, The Cheats (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth). Like Caravaggio's prototype, Valentin's painting shows a group of rough mercenary soldiers, types who idled about Rome in the seventeenth century waiting for employment and who are identifiable by their armor, worn piecemeal, and assorted livery. They are gaming at a table in a tavern or a dark alley, where two roll dice while two others, center and left, play cards. As the more finely dressed youth in a feathered cap at the left examines his cards, a fifth figure in the shadows behind him signals to his accomplice in the center the hand of the young dupe. 

Valentin (French, c.1591 - 1632) presented a raw and sinister scene of contemporary street life, which is at the same time a moral admonition of the incaution and profligacy of youth. The crowding of the figures into the picture space adds to the tension of the scene. The painting is indebted to Caravaggio not only for its subject, but also for the vivid sense of actuality with which Valentin invested his protagonists, for the strong chiaroscuro, and for the thinly and rapidly brushed execution. As was Caravaggio's practice, this work is painted alla prima, directly onto the prepared canvas without underdrawing or any other apparent preliminary work. This approach enhances the sense of spontaneity and the feeling that the spectator is catching a glimpse of illicit low life.

[Oil on canvas, 121 x 152 cm]