Mola was a painter and etcher. He was born in Coldrerio in 1612 and died in Rome in 1666. Richard Wallace captures the essence of his drawing style; "he was a brilliant draftsmn—the master of a bold fluid line and brilliant washes" and laments that he made so few prints (Sue Walsh Reed and Richad Wallace, Italian Etchers of the Renaissance & Baroque [Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1989], p. 196). Graf praises his technique with the brush, "at once free yet sure. In such drawings Mola, whose gifts were essentially painterly, is less concerned with an exact drawing of the figures than with planning a composition based on the interplay of light and shade: (commentary on n. 105). Graf notes that in some cases "no documentary evidence of a painting by Mola" on the subject of a drawing may exist. Jacob Bean, discussing three drawings in the Princeton University Art Museum, makes it clear that he thinks the qualities that allow a drawing to be attributed to Mola are sufficiently strong indicators that they are grounds for changing attributions: "The style of the sheet proclaims it to be the work of Pier Francesco Mola": "washes are used broadly to unify a design sketched in angular, abbreviated pen work" (40-41). One need only look at a number of his drawings to recognize that his hand can indeed proclaim a work his even when it is not—as most of his drawings are not—signed by the artist. Mola recently entered the higher reaches of auction activity with the sale of a painting for over $8,000,000.

Selected Bibliography: Jacob Bean, Italian Drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University (Princeton: The Art Museum, 1966), n. 53-55; G. Briganti et al, Pier Francesco Mola, 1612-1666 (Lugano, Museo Cantonale d'Arte, 1989), John Gently, Pier Francesco Mola nella colleziono svizzere (Lugano: Antiquario Bruno Scardeoni; Dieter Graf, Master Drawings of the Roman Baroque from the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf. A Selection from the Lambert Krahe Collection (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973), plates 102-112.