The Cardsharps painted by Michaelangelo Caravaggio sometime around 1594.

The first thing that struck me about this painting beyond just the fact that it is beautifully composed was the way in which the entire frame is lit. Unlike some of the other paintings which either had crushed shadows or very bright highlights, this whole frame is reasonably even in its lighting.

The Key light is realistic and photographic even, Caravaggio hasn’t played around with the shape of the light too much. It would appear that the painting has been painted from a real life setting. Obviously, the camera was not yet invented yet so the image cannot be a photo, however photographic it looks.

The key light is bouncing quite obviously off the wall behind the characters and this is also creating a nice even circular highlight on the wall behind them, likely providing the majority of the fill light everywhere in the frame. The fill light is also very golden and the walls seem to be off-white, further evidence that this wall pictured is the source of the fill. The characters shadows are very obviously coming down and right so we should assume that the very large key light (in comparison to the fill light, large key/fill ratio) is coming from the left side of the frame, off camera and ‘up-stage’ if you will. The key is very soft and diffused which, I feel makes a very pleasing image and has a really pleasing effect on the skin tones of the painted characters.