Pier Leone Ghezzi

Clergymen Brulô and Durac Bernard seated playing chess with the marquis Bernardo del Grillo standing behind

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Pier Leone Ghezzi

Rome 1674–1755

Clergymen Brulô and Durac Bernard seated playing chess with the marquis Bernardo del Grillo standing behind

Pen and brown ink, over traces of black chalk, within light brown ink framing lines, in the original album page numbered 69 and inscribed by the artist with the names of the sitters at the bottom of the sheet, the names repeated on the album page

290 by 209 mm

Pier Leone Ghezzi can be described as the artist who best represented the Roman society of his time. The Eternal City was, at that time, still the centre of European artistic culture, and Ghezzi, through his famous caricatures, documented almost every aspect of society at all levels.

The caricatures, mostly executed carefully in the same technique in pen and ink, are meant to be finished works and were once mostly part of albums, or possibly intended as gifts. Ghezzi's interest in portraiture had manifested from the start of his artistic career, but perhaps it could not have been foreseen that he would become the undisputed protagonist and chronicler of his time, and given the revealing inscriptions, allow many of the sitters to be identified witnessing and documenting the society around him.