GHEZZI, PIER LEONE. - Painter and draughtsman, b. in Rome on 28 June 1674 and d. there on 5 March 1755. He was set on the path of art by his father Giuseppe and, like his father, he too was soon among the most celebrated Roman artists of the time and enjoyed favors and honors from cardinals and from Pope Clement XI; the duke of Parma made him a count and a knight.
He frequented the Accademia di S. Luca, of which he was elected a member in 1705. His first works were sketches from his father's paintings and engravings for books (those for the Homiliae in Evangelia and for the Orationes Consistoriales of Clement XI are remembered), but he was afterwards very active with numerous paintings for the churches of Rome, of some of which all trace has today been lost. Among those that remain are remembered, at S. Marcello al Corso, the mediocre picture with St. Juliana Falconieri and the Vestition of the same Saint in the church of the Archconfraternity of S. Maria dell'Orazione e Morte in Via Giulia, St. Ignatius among the lions (1715) in S. Clemente, and the Prophet Micah (1718) in S. Giovanni in Laterano. He also made cartoons for tapestries and collaborated in the staging of festivities and spectacles, and he too, like his father, attended to the restoration (with ideas indeed very free) of old paintings. Of 1727 are the frescoes on the walls of the Villa Falconieri at Frascati, with portraits of personages of the Falconieri family and burlesque scenes full of a keen spirit of observation. And it is this «verve» and this spirit that make him still today famous for that numerous group of caricatures (a rich collection is in the Vatican Library) which, beyond their artistic value, hold a particular importance for the social history of Rome in the eighteenth century. At the Uffizi three self-portraits of his are preserved, another is at the Accademia di S. Luca in Rome.
Bibliography2 works
Gilberto Ronci