Pier Leone Ghezzi (28 June 1674 – 6 March 1755) was an Italian Rococo painter and caricaturist active in Rome. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_Leone_Ghezzi) Ghezzi was the godson of Carlo Maratta, and was trained by his father, Giuseppe Ghezzi (1634–1721), who was a secretary to the Roman Accademia di San Luca. Pier Leone himself joined the Accademia in 1705, and painted an Allegory of Gratitude as his submission picture. He executed frescoes in the Villa Falconieri at Frascati, but is much better known today for his amusing and characterful caricature portrait drawings, which take many of Rome’s artistic and intellectual community as their subjects. Among his sitters were Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Locatelli and many others. Ghezzi was a prolific draftsman and many of his caricatures were given away or sold by him during his lifetime. Many caricatures were bound in albums, and when the artist died several albums of caricatures remained in the possession of his wife. In 1755, the director of the French Academy in Rome wrote to the Marquis de Marigny that Ghezzi’s widow was unwilling to break up the albums and was asking two sequins for each caricature. A near-intact album with 47 full-page portraits and 64 portrait busts is preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. The Morgan album is dated 1780 and was apparently only assembled then, 25 years after the artist’s death. Another large collection of caricatures by Ghezzi is in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome. (http://www.old-master-drawing.com/home/product/view/8/208.html) undefined

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