Biography

Pier Leone Ghezzi was born in Rome, the son of a history painter. Ghezzi worked as a serious artist, painting subject pictures and portraits, but it is his caricatures for which he is most renowned. He produced thousands of portrait drawings and was highly skilled at capturing the essence of his subject with a few rapid strokes of his pen. He made many caricatures of members of the Papal and Jacobite courts and of visitors to Rome.