Pier Leone Ghezzi

Bio

As the son of the painter Giuseppe (permanent secretary to the Accademia de San Luca) and godson of Carlo Maratta, Pier Leone Ghezzi grew up at the very heart of the Roman artistic milieu. It is therefore not surprising that he later became a point of reference for various cultured circles in the city, due to his multivarious activities: painter, antiquarian, collector of drawings, illustrator of books, dealer and cicerone. A member of the Academy from 1705, he benefited from the protection of Pope Clement XI and his family, the Albani, and became Pittore della Camera Apostolica in 1708. Ghezzi’s career as a painter, most active up to the end of the 1720s, has been overshadowed by his reputation as one of the major caricaturists of the century. The quantity of his sapid drawings of prelates, noblemen, artists and assorted visitors to Rome remains a unique visual document of the society of his time.