A Caravaggio show in Sicily is set to become one of the most popular exhibits ever in southern Italy, the latest figures suggest.
The exhibition, which showcases 15 works by the 17th-century master, has drawn more than 12,000 visitors in the month since it opened.
Some 1,400 people visited the event in its first two weeks alone - a record for exhibits on older art.
The show features a number of Caravaggio greats on loan from public and private collections around the world.
Entitled 'Caravaggio. L'Immagine del Divino' (Caravaggio. The Image of the Divine), it focuses mainly on religious subjects, unlike the artist's earlier, more worldly paintings.
The star of the event in the western Sicilian city of Trapani is a replica of his renowned masterpiece The Card Sharps ('I Bari').
The painting was recently rediscovered by British art historian Sir Denis Mahon, who spotted the grimy painting for sale in an auction catalogue in London, where it was described as the work of a Caravaggio follower.
Mahon, one of the world's top Caravaggio experts, bought the painting for 50,000 pounds.
After cleaning it, he established it was the work of the master himself, since confirmed by X-ray tests and other Caravaggio scholars.
Experts agree it was probably a first version of The Card Sharps. That work, worth some $50 million, is in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The two paintings, which are nearly identical, show a young, well-dressed man playing cards and being duped by two other men.
But despite the similarity in appearance, said Italian art historian Maurizio Marini, there are some important distinctions between the two.
''The London painting is technically very different, completed in the Venetian, layered style,'' he said.
''Meanwhile, the colour in the Fort Worth painting is less concentrated and the artist has used more expensive materials, such as malachite, cochineal and lapis lazuli, indicating the importance of the commission''.
Another difference is the perspective, which is slightly more sophisticated in the Fort Worth painting, foregrounding the group, rather than showing it from above.
The Cardinal del Monte is thought to have eventually acquired both paintings, which were completed at different times during the period 1594-6.
Caravaggio completed the majority of the paintings on show during a nine-month stay in Sicily, having fled Rome after killing a man in a tavern brawl.
The Sicily works were among his final paintings. After leaving the island he travelled to Naples and then to Porto Ercole north of Rome where he died of a fever in 1610, aged 39.
The exhibition, which marks 400 years since Caravaggio's stay in Sicily, opened on December 15 and runs until March 14 in the Pepoli Museum.
