Giovanni Paolo Panini

Architectural Capriccio with a Sibyl in Front of the Pyramid of Cestius
(49.5 x 64.7 cm)
Capriccio with an Apostle Preaching in Roman Ruins
(50.3 x 66.4 cm)

Giovanni Paolo Panini, born in 1691 in Piacenza, worked exclusively in Rome, having moved there to further his artistic studies in 1711. He trained under quadratisti, set designers, figure drawers, landscape artists and fresco painters, a variety which enabled him to execute all elements of the vedute and capricci for which he is famed. His aesthetic constructions appealed greatly to the taste of these Tourists, who must have been captivated by his blending of the ancient with the more modern, the historic with the more romantic. Panini’s ability to faithfully represent existing monuments in invented compositions of his own creation and imbue these settings with life sets him apart from other painters of

These two fine capricci are excellent examples of Panini’s oeuvre. Painted in 1739 in Rome when the artist was at his best, they are described as “gioielli di perfezione assoluta” by the art historian Ferdinando Arisi, author of Panini’s catalogue raisonné (see F. Arisi, 1986, p. 124). Both once belonged to the Fabroni Collection in Pistoia, and subsequently to that of the Florentine art historian Carlo Gamba.

There are two other known paintings by Panini with a similar composition featuring a Sibyl, however, Panini’s treatment and use of light give a more luminous effect to this example. The Pyramid of Cestius would have been a familiar sight for visitors to Rome as it was considered an important vestige of the city’s ancient past. The columns on the left, although impossible to identify with any certainty due to their positioning, are evocative of many of the greatest monuments in Rome and the vase in the style of the famed Medici Vase, a component of the canon of antique art, would have been instantly recognisable to the educated Grand Tourist of the time. Panini uses warm sunlight to highlight these elements of the composition to a much greater and more effective extent than in the other versions, successfully drawing the observer into the atmosphere of the scene.

In the second painting, the Apostle, framed by an antique arch, is literally surrounded by relics of Rome’s (pagan) past; he stands amongst the ruins of an ancient building, with column bases and decorative masonry scattered at his feet, he is observed by a statue, perhaps of a Bacchante given the presence of the pan-pipes on her pedestal, and in the foreground, a relief depicting a lion, reminiscent of the Medici Lions, is propped up against the rubble. Panini uses a language based on the shared knowledge of well-known examples of ancient art to create a setting which must have been at once recognisable yet exciting not only for foreign Tourists, but also for those who lived in Rome, who in his paintings could see a version of their city both ‘capricious’ and familiar.

Together, these two paintings illustrate Panini’s talents as a painter of wide-ranging skill and the individuality of his art – his tender nostalgia and hints of Romanticism tempered by the reality of history and architecture and his picturesque scenes of ruins enlivened by the action of gesturing figures setting him apart from his predecessors and contemporaries.