One of the great Italian masters of the 18th century, Panini is most remembered for his depictions of Rome, his portrait of Pope Benedict XIV, and for his capriccios. As in the painting above, his nostalgic and grand vistas of Roman ruins are arranged in impossible and therefore capricious ways. The Pantheon lays in the background as the statue of Marcus Aurelius on a horse is the picture’s main focal point. Guards, citizens, and even a little dog bustle around with the statue of Silenus cradling the infant Dionysus (now in the Louvre) to the left. Panini signed only a small portion of his workshop’s output, probably the works he excluseively painted, (two of these signed works are displayed in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art). As with paintings such as this one, he would oversee design and then finish the more complicated parts of the work, adding fine detail and painting human figures. *Provenance: Sotheby’s London, 2015. Private Collection, Paris 2019.

Dimensions: 39 x 47 inches

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