One of the greatest caricaturists of the seventeenth century, Pier Francesco Mola often included recognizable images of himself and his close friends in his drawings. These men peering at the painting of a cosmographer or astronomer have not been identified, but the image is a timeless satire on the art of connoisseurship.
Pier Francesco Mola (1612–1666), The Connoisseurs, pen and brown ink. Gift of Janos Scholz, 1985.90.