Pier Francesco Mola, called Il Ticinese (9 February 1612 – 13 May 1666) was an Italian painter of the High Baroque, mainly active around Rome. His masterpiece as a fresco painter is widely considered to be the fresco in the gallery of Alexander VII in the Quirinal Palace Gallery, entitled Joseph making himself known to his Brethren (1657). However, Mola is considered to have been better as a painter of small pictures, especially landscapes. With his looser style and handling, more naturalistic palette, and interest in exploring landscape elements, Mola differs from the prevailing, highly-theoretical classicism of such leading 17th-century Roman painters as Andrea Sacchi.
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Pier Francesco Mola in the context of Barbary pirates
The Barbary corsairs, Barbary pirates, Ottoman corsairs, or naval mujahideen (in Muslim sources) were mainly Muslim corsairs and privateers who operated from the North African coast, known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in Britain and Ireland, and Iceland (commemorated as the Turkish Abductions).
While such raids began after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 710s, the terms "Barbary pirates" and "Barbary corsairs" are normally applied to the raiders active from the 16th century onwards, when the frequency and range of the slavers' attacks increased. In that period, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli came under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, either as directly administered provinces or as autonomous dependencies known as the Barbary states. Similar raids were undertaken from Salé (see Salé Rovers) and other ports in Morocco.