(Piacenza 1691–1765 Rome)
An Architectural Capriccio with figures among Roman ruins including the Temple of Saturn, Arch of Titus, Temple of Minerva Medica and Temple of Fortuna Virilis,
oil on canvas, 74 x 115 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Antichità Taccani, Milan;
acquired by the present owner’s father in the 1980s and thence by descent;
sale, Bonham’s, London, 7 December 2011, lot 26 (as Giovanni Paolo Panini)

Literature:
F. Arisi, Giovanni Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del Settecento, Rome 1986, p. 457, no.456 (as Giovanni Paolo Panini)

The present painting represents a ‘veduta ideata’, a typical work on the artist’s oeuvre, where the most famous monuments of antiquity of Rome are juxtaposed in a fanciful depiction of the Roman forum.

In the present work we can recognise, from left to right, the Temple of Saturn, the Arch of Titus, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the Temple of Minerva Medica and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis. Panini frequently revived entire compositions or portions of them. The groups of buildings in the present veduta can be compared with the ones, for example, in two paintings dated 1739 and 1741, respectively in a Roman private collection and in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (see: F. Arisi, Giovanni Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del Settecento, Rome 1986, nn. 270 and 303), although the lighter tones and the freer brushstrokes characteristic of the present work suggest a later date for this capriccio. In Panini and his workshop’s works the repetition of individual motifs is typical. For example, the figure of the young man seated to the left of the Temple of Saturn appears in other compositions, such as three vedute in private collections and another one in Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (see op. cit., 1986, nn. 451-453 and 460).