The Gamblers

Two young men tell the old man he has lost the game. He needs to adjust his glasses to believe his bad luck. Is his sword enough insurance in case they’ve tried to cheat him? Hendrick ter Brugghen went to Italy in 1604 and stayed more than a decade. During that time he absorbed the style of Caravaggio, a painter famous for his high-contrast naturalism. Ter Brugghen brought that style home to Utrecht when he returned in 1616, yet by 1623 he had turned away from Caravaggio’s sharp contrasts of dark and light. As we see here, he developed his own style, with silvery, diffuse light and transparent shadows. And he was a leader of the Utrecht fashion for depicting gamblers playing cards, dice, and backgammon.