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Lot Essay
This drawing portrays two members of the family of Ghezzi's patrons, the Falsacappa. Around 1712, Ghezzi painted an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saint Joseph and Saint Felice Cappuccino for the church of Saint Joseph in Tarquinia, near Civitavecchia, which was commissioned by Giovanni Vincenzo Falsacappa and his son Leonardo around the time of the beatification of Saint Felice Cappuccino on 22 May 1722.
The present drawing probably dates from the same period. Ghezzi drew two further members of the Falsacappa family: the Contessa with a nun and an abbot, and the mother of the Contessa, A. Lo Bianco, op. cit., figs 32b-c. This group of portraits are executed in a refined technique which is not used in his caricatures. A self-portrait by Ghezzi similar in technique is in the Institut Nerlandais, Paris, J. Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1983, no. 185, pl. 212.
The present drawing probably dates from the same period. Ghezzi drew two further members of the Falsacappa family: the Contessa with a nun and an abbot, and the mother of the Contessa, A. Lo Bianco, op. cit., figs 32b-c. This group of portraits are executed in a refined technique which is not used in his caricatures. A self-portrait by Ghezzi similar in technique is in the Institut Nerlandais, Paris, J. Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1983, no. 185, pl. 212.