Fiction. These paintings were never painted. Images are AI-generated, stories and auctions are invented.

The Betrayed Dice Player

From the Whatifs Catalogue, the encyclopedia of paintings that never were

This article is fiction. Caravaggio never painted this work. The image was generated by AI and the story below, including its discovery and sale, is invented.

The Betrayed Dice Player is an imagined painting attributed, within the Whatifs fiction, to Caravaggio (c. 1597). It belongs to the Whatifs series of works the great masters never painted.

History and rediscovery

Cardinal Del Monte is said to have commissioned a companion piece to The Cardsharps. Mentioned by a single biographer, it vanished when a Roman villa was looted in 1798. It resurfaced in 2023 in the sacristy of a Maltese church, under a blackened varnish that made it pass for a copy. Cleaning revealed the painter's signature incised outlines, scratched with the butt of the brush.

Sale

Within the fiction, the painting sold for €84,500,000 (2025). Tap the board to replay the imagined bidding. The auction pictured below never took place.

Imagined saleroom (AI-generated photo)
AI-generated photograph of a fictional auction.

See also

Notes

  1. Image generated with AI from a prompt written by Whatifs. No real painting, signature or auction house is reproduced.
  2. Story written for Whatifs. Any resemblance to real discoveries is coincidental.

Hang the painting that never was

A 50 × 60 cm museum-grade print of “The Betrayed Dice Player”, labelled as a Whatifs creation on the back. 29 €, shipped in Europe.

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