GIOVANNI PAOLO PANNINI
ITALIAN, 1691–1765
Imaginary Landscape with Roman Ruins
1740
Oil on canvas
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
Early in his career, Giovanni Paolo Pannini painted grand
perspective scenes with “history” subjects—narratives drawn
from myth, ancient history, or the Bible—and entered the
Academy of Saint Luke in Rome in 1719, submitting a
painting of Alexander Visiting the Tomb of Achilles.1 However,
elaborate architectural backdrops always dominated the
ostensible narrative focus of Pannini’s compositions, and
gradually the monuments themselves took center stage. By
the 1730s he became the premiere painter in Rome of a new
form of architectural capriccio featuring theatrical, large-scale,
imaginative re-combinations of ancient Roman monuments.
The repertoire seen here, uniting (from left to right) the
Temple of Hadrian, the Theater of Marcellus,2 the Flaminian
Obelisk, the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine, and the
Sarcophagus of Constantina, was one of his most popular
designs, with at least six other known versions by Pannini
or his workshop.3 He often paired the panel with another
featuring Roman ruins including the Maison Carrée.4
In his move from history subjects to architectural capricci,
Pannini retained his human figures but changed them from
actors (great men, Biblical heroines, etc.) to spectators.
These viewers look and gesture at the great monuments
before them; in this way, they parallel the likely clients for
the paintings, visitors to Rome on the Grand Tour. Pannini
creates a Rome comprised only of ancient monuments with
vaunted pasts: the obelisk, for example, was imported from
Heliopolis by the Emperor Augustus in 10 BCE. In the right
foreground, three spectators have an actual encounter with
antiquity, spying an “ancient” man perched atop marble
fragments. This kind of spectatorship was encouraged by
traditions like the Grand Tour and the formation of new
princely collections of antiquities in Rome, including those
at the Vatican. The Sarcophagus of Constantina, for example,
would by 1790 be moved from the Piazza San Marco in
Rome to the newly-established Vatican Museum.
Like other view painters in the CMA collection, Pannini
adhered to rules of perspective and illusionism, giving even
the most fanciful recreations the appearance of reality. He
was in essence creating a visual, edited collection of Roman
sites that was more evocative than descriptive—a kind of
ancient theme park.
By Anna House
1. Reproduced in Ferdinando Arisi, ed., Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1691-1765 (Milan: Electa, 1993), 138-139.
2. The monument has also been identified as the Colosseum, but the Doric frieze between stories and the tall, narrow arches
resemble the Theater of Marcellus more closely; in reality Panini’s depiction matches neither monument precisely. Many
thanks to Dr. James Alexander from the University of Georgia for suggesting the alternate identification in a letter of 7
June 1977 in the CMA files.
3. A signed version dated 1736, A Capriccio View of Rome with Ancient Ruins and the Flaminian Obelisk, was offered for
sale at Sotheby’s on 5 December 2012 (Lot 27; Old Master and British Paintings Evening Sale Including Three Renaissance
Masterworks from Chatsworth); Arisi considered this the original on which the others were based. Other versions were
sold at Sotheby’s, Milan, 2 December 2003, lot 126; Christie’s, London, 23 March 1973, lot 92; and held in private
collections in Piacenza and France. See Ferdinando Arisi, ed., Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma dell’700 (Rome: Ugo
Bozzi Editore, 1986), p. 409 no. 357. On the CMA’s painting, see Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection: Italian Schools (as ‘attributed to Giovanni Paolo Panini and assistant,’ following Arisi’s view), vol. 3 (London:
Phaidon, 1973), cat. K1984 p. 122-3 fig. 245, and Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, The Columbia Museum of Art: Art of the
Renaissance from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, 2nd ed. (Columbia, 1962), 131f.
4. Ibid., p. 410 no. 358.
Columbia Museum of Art