Since Hogarth's work often bordered on exaggeration, it was sometimes dismissed by critics as mere caricature. Hogarth answered these charges in an announcement of his brilliant six-picture-drama Marriage à la mode. At the bottom left-hand corner he drew the heads of three Biblical characters based on sketches by Raphael, together with their distortions by other Italian artists. He then filled the remainder of the page with a sea of faces that he claimed represented character rather than caricature.
