Giovanni Paolo Panini

Giovanni Paolo Panini
Portrait of Panini by
Born	(1691-06-17)17 June 1691 Piacenza, Duchy of Parma, Holy Roman Empire
Died	21 October 1765(1765-10-21) (aged 74) Rome, Papal States (now Italy)
Nationality	Italian
Known for	painter
Notable work	veduta

Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini (17 June 1691 – 21 October 1765) was a painter and architect who worked in Rome and is primarily known as one of the vedutisti ("view painters"). As a painter, Panini is best known for his vistas of Rome, in which he took a particular interest in the city's antiquities. Among his most famous works are his view of the interior of the Pantheon (on behalf of Francesco Algarotti), and his vedute—paintings of picture galleries containing views of Rome. Most of his works, especially those of ruins, have a fanciful and unreal embellishment characteristic of capriccio themes. In this they resemble the capricci of Marco Ricci. Panini also painted portraits, including one of Pope Benedict XIV.^[1]

Biography[]

As a young man, Panini trained in his native town of Piacenza, under Giuseppe Natali and , and with stage designer Francesco Galli-Bibiena. In 1711, he moved to Rome, where he studied drawing with Benedetto Luti.

In Rome, Panini earned a name for himself as a decorator of palaces. Some of his works included the Villa Patrizi (1719–1725), the Palazzo de Carolis (1720), and the Seminario Romano (1721–1722). In 1719, Panini was admitted to the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon. He taught in Rome at the Accademia di San Luca and the Académie de France, where he is said to have influenced Jean-Honoré Fragonard. In 1754, he served as the prince (director) of the Accademia di San Luca.

The Spanish monarchs appreciated his work in such a way that, commissioned by Filippo Juvarra, he sent paintings to decorate the Lacquer Room of the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso. In addition, King Carlos IV, when he was Prince, bought several of his works that are still preserved in the Prado Museum and in the royal palaces.^[2]

Panini died in Rome on 21 October 1765.^[1]

Legacy[]

Panini's studio included Hubert Robert and his son Francesco Panini. His style influenced other vedutisti, such as his pupils Antonio Joli and Charles-Louis Clérisseau, as well as Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto, who sought to meet the need of visitors for painted "postcards" depicting the Italian environs.^{[citation needed]} Some British landscape painters, such as Marlow, Skelton and Wright of Derby, also imitated his capricci.^{[citation needed]}

In addition to being a painter and architect, Panini was a professor of perspective and optics at the French Academy of Rome. His masterful use of perspective was later the inspiration for the creation of the "Panini Projection", which is instrumental in rendering panoramic views. [1][2]

Panini's works are held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the Prado Museum,^[2] the Louvre,^[3] the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte,^[4] the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza,^[4] the Hermitage,^[4] the Pushkin Museum,^[4] the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,^[4] the Staatliche Museen,^[4] the Palazzo del Quirinale,^[4] the Toledo Museum of Art,^[5] the University of Michigan Museum of Art,^[6] the Brooklyn Museum,^[7] the Saint Louis Art Museum,^[8] the Detroit Institute of Arts,^[9] the Museum of Fine Arts Boston,^[10] the Getty Center,^[11] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[12] the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,^[13] the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,^[14] the Walters Art Museum,^[15] the Harvard Art Museums,^[16] the Philadelphia Museum of Art,^[17] and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.^[18]

Gallery[]

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  Interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 1734

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  Saint Paul Preaching in Athens, 1734, National Gallery of Art

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  Roman Capriccio: The Pantheon and Other Monuments (1735), Indianapolis Museum of Art

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  A Capriccio of the Roman Forum (1741), at the Yale University Art Gallery^[19]

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  Ancient Rome (1757), Metropolitan Museum of Art

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  Modern Rome (1757), Metropolitan Museum of Art

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  The Lottery at Palazzo Montecitorio, now in the National Gallery, London

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  St. Peter's Basilica, from the entrance

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  Adoration of the Shepherds, Adoration of the Magi (1755), shown here at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City

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  View of the Colosseum (1747), at The Walters Art Museum

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  German soldiers in 1944 posing with a Pannini picture – Carlo III di Borbone che visita il papa Benedetto XIV nella coffee-house del Quirinale a Roma – at the time looted from the Naples Museum

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  A Concert Given by the duc de Nivernais to mark the Birth of the Dauphin, 1751 at Waddesdon Manor

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  Ruins of Ancient Rome

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  Christ casting the Money Changers out of the Temple. ca. 1725. Prado Museum, Madrid.^[20]

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  The pool at Bethesda, (1724), at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.^[21]

Death Leap of Marcus

References[]

Further reading[]

• Arisi, Ferdinando (1986). Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del '700 [Gian Paolo Panini and events in 18th c. Rome.] (in Italian). ISBN 88-7003-016-4.
• Arisi, Ferdinando,Giovanni Paolo Panini 1691-1765, Milano, 1993.
• Horak, Marco, Ritornato a Piacenza il dipinto di Panini passato all'asta lo scorso anno a Londra: si tratta dell' "opera prima", pendant di quello esposto alla Glauco Lombardi di Parma, in "Strenna Piacentina 2013", Piacenza, 2013.
• Horak, Marco, Quell'opera prima di Panini gemella del dipinto esposto al Lombardi di Parma, in "L'Urtiga - Quaderni di cultura Piacentina", Piacenza, n. 4, 2013.
• Horak, Marco, L'opera prima del Panini in una collezione privata, in "Panorama Musei", anno XVIII, n.3, dicembre 2013
• Horak, Marco, G.P. Panini al Fine Art Museum di San Francisco, in "Panorama Musei", anno XXI, n. 2, settembre 2016
• Horak, Marco, Giovanni Ghisolfi tra Salvator Rosa e Giovanni Paolo Panini, Piacenza, 2020

External links[]

• 68 artworks by or after Giovanni Paolo Panini at the Art UK site
• Media related to Giovanni Paolo Pannini at Wikimedia Commons
• Art and the empire city: New York, 1825-1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Panini (see index)
• Europe in the age of enlightenment and revolution, a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Panini (see index)
• Capriccio of Roman Ruins with Figures, from the Permanent Collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts
• Panini at Waddesdon Manor