Mola is among those artists who, while not outstanding painters, nevertheless reflected in their work various tendencies in the development of Italian 17th-century art. The artist's biography is linked to Rome, where he studied under Giuseppe Cesari. Mola spent time in Venice and Bologna and became fascinated with the Venetian painters of the High Renaissance and the Bolognese academists, including Francesco Albani. Those impressions proved very strong: in his own work Mola tried to balance the Bolognese aesthetics with the Venetian sense of colour. Among the artist's best works are a pair of paintings that came into the Hermitage from the Crozat collection - Rest on the Flight into Egypt and Jacob Meeting Rachel. In Mola's oeuvre the Hermitage Rest on the Flight into Egypt is in a certain sense the culminating moment in the evolution of a theme to which the artist turned repeatedly. In this painting we can sense the Titian (in the depiction of the landscape), Francesco Albani (in the group of figures) and Poussin (in the use of "archaeological" elements).