He is one of the most revered artists in western art, yet just a few dozen works by Caravaggio have survived. Now the 17th-century master’s hand has been confirmed in a painting that Sotheby’s and the Metropolitan Museum in New York had dismissed as a mere copy.
Scientific analysis of The Lute Player, which was bought for Badminton House in Gloucestershire in the 18th century, has concluded that it is by Caravaggio, with a probability of 85.7%.
Tests involving artificial intelligence showed a “strong match” with verified paintings. The study was conducted by Art Recognition, a Swiss specialist in authenticating artworks, collaborating on research with Liverpool University among others.
Its head, Dr Carina Popovici, told the Guardian: “Everything over 80% is very high.”
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is considered a revolutionary among artists, revered for his radical use of light and dark – chiaroscuro – and the realism of his compositions.
Such is the rarity of his paintings that when one was discovered in 2019, it was valued at around £96m. But in 1969 Sotheby’s sold the Badminton Lute Player as a copy “after Caravaggio” for £750. In 2001 it sold it as “circle of Caravaggio” for about £71,000.
The buyer then was the British art historian and gallerist Clovis Whitfield, a specialist in Italian old masters, who recognised its quality and the fact that it “corresponded exactly” with a description by Giovanni Baglione in his 1642 Caravaggio biography.
Whitfield said: “Baglione mentions minutely observed details such as the reflection on dew drops on the flowers.”
His Lute Player is one of three versions. An undisputed one is in the Hermitage in Russia, and another – in which the lute player is a woman rather than a young man – is in the Wildenstein collection, having been displayed at the Met between 1990 and 2013.
In 1990, Keith Christiansen, the Met’s then head of European paintings, described the Wildenstein version as an original and the Badminton one as a copy.
Whitfield made his purchase with Alfred Bader, a collector who died in 2016, to whom Christiansen wrote in 2007: “No one – certainly no modern scholar – has ever or ever would entertain the idea that your painting could be painted by Caravaggio.”
Whitfield said Christiansen and some Italian scholars were “a bit stuck in the traditional mud” in refusing to accept the attribution, even though other experts support it. “The AI result knocks Mr Christiansen off his perch,” he said.
Art Recognition’s analysis also concluded that the Wildenstein was “not an authentic work”. Popovici said: “Our AI returned a negative result.”
Evidence includes the depictions of the lute. David Van Edwards, a leading lute maker and president of the Lute Society, said the Wildenstein instrument had “many faults”, unlike those in the Badminton and Hermitage paintings.
William Audland KC, a barrister and art lover who is writing a book on The Lute Player, said: “As a barrister and a litigator, I look at all the evidence in any case very forensically. Taking all the evidence into account, it seems to me that a manifest injustice is being done by any scholar who suggests that the Wildenstein version is autograph and the Badminton version is a poor copy.
“A holistic view of the relevant evidence points to the opposite conclusion, one which has now been corroborated by AI analysis, which is objective, unlike the subjective opinions of scholars which can get in the way. The Badminton version is an astonishing painting. It takes your breath away when you see it.”
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In 1597, Caravaggio had been living on the streets of Rome as an impoverished artist when he was given food and lodgings by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who became his most important patron. Shortly afterwards, Caravaggio painted The Lute Player, showing off his talent to his then prospective patron.
In the late 1620s, the Del Monte collection was sold. Antonio Barberini, a future cardinal, bought five Caravaggios including The Lute Player, which was bought a century later by the 3rd Duke of Beaufort of Badminton House.
Whitfield and Popovici will discuss the painting in a new podcast titled Is It?, the first of a series that launches on 27 September. It is presented by Dr Noah Charney, who is preparing an academic paper on the painting.
Geraldine Norman, a leading art market expert, will explore the full story of the painting in a feature documentary that is in development.
The Badminton painting is now in London. Whitfield would like it to go to a public collection, just as the National Gallery has secured a landmark investment of £375m.
In its 2001 sale catalogue, Sotheby’s noted that it “has been reasonably suggested” that the painter may have been Carlo Magnone, who in 1642 was recorded as having painted a copy after Del Monte’s Lute Player.
George Gordon, a co-chair of Sotheby’s Worldwide Old Master Paintings, described the “lengthy” catalogue entry as “thoughtful and comprehensive” and noted that many of Caravaggio’s paintings were copied by other artists, even in his lifetime, “as early 17th-century Roman inventories and written sources show”.
He said: “I don’t think there have been significant changes in Caravaggio scholarship in recent years which would radically alter the 2001 consensus about this work.”
Christiansen declined to comment.