Capriccio View of Classical Ruins

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Giovanni Paolo Panini
Capriccio View of Classical Ruins
ca. 1715

Name: Capriccio View of Classical Ruins
Brand: Giovanni Paolo Panini
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

About the Item

Gian Paolo Panini Piacenza 1691 - 1765 Rome 52.5" x 44", ca. 1715 Exhibition SFO Airport Museum, All Roads Lead to Rome: 17th - 19th Century Architectural Souvenirs from the Collection of Piraneseum, January 21 - August 13, 2017. When we think of 18th century Italian architectural painting, we think first of Gian Paolo Panini, the pre-eminent, hugely influential, prolific, and most successful painter of Roman views, both real - vedute essate - and imaginary - vedute ideate. His work was was the first to blur the line between the two types of views, often picturing real buildings and monuments in imaginary settings, and to very great picturesque effect. One especially abundant picture, a favorite of ours, features the Arch of Titus, Pyramid of Caius Cestius, Temple of Vesta (in Tivoli!), Pantheon, and Lateran Obelisk, though these landmarks, in reality, are nowhere near each other or, in one case, even in the same city! As unlikely as this group is, the picture provides a powerful, memorable view of Roman antiquity. Born about 1691 in Piacenza, Panini was perhaps trained in Bologna by one of the Galli Bibiena, a family famous for exuberant quadratura (architecturally illusionistic) stage design. By 1711 the young painter reached Rome, where he studied figure painting with Benedetto Luti. Panini’s career rapidly accelerated. In addition to architectural views, very popular with Grand Tourists, he painted vedute of festivals, ceremonies, and the visits to Rome of a range of notable figures. By 1719, Panini was accorded membership in the Congregaziione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon and Accademie di San Lucia. Among his famous clients was the Pope. During this period, he assembled a large, talented workshop, which saw to the precise carrying out of Panini’s painting designs. Unlike other vedutistas, Panini painted his own figures. Said to be his favorite assistant was the Frenchman Hubert Robert, whose later successes with pre-Romantic architectural views, in both Rome and Paris, built directly on his time with Panini. Our picture is an unusual, early, imaginary architectural view by the master of 18th century Roman vedute. Unlike later work, the pictured ruins are related to, but not identical with, well-known Roman monuments. For example, the temple just beyond the arch - with its dome and triangular, pedimented roof supported on columns - suggests the Pantheon, though it is hardly a faithful representation. Other elements, including the deftly-handled jumble of ruined architectural elements in the foreground, resting in a pool of water, are among the painter’s signature devices. With its strong upper right to lower left perspectitval arrangement, the picture may be compared with numbers 114, 262, and others in Ferdinando Arisi’s Gian Paolo Panini e i facti della Roman del ‘700. Of a nearly identical painting sold several years ago, both Arisi and historian Giancarlo Sestieri suggested the work was from early in Panini’s career, perhaps ca. 1715, after his arrival in Rome in 1711. Of course, the most striking feature of this picture (as well as its near twin) is that it is unpopulated. Sestieri suggests these canvases may be incomplete, an intriguing possibility. Panini’s paintings are included in the collections of the Hermitage, Louvre, and Prado.

Creator:
Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691 - 1765, Italian)
Creation Year:
ca. 1715
Dimensions:
Height: 52.5 in (133.35 cm)Width: 44 in (111.76 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
More Editions & Sizes:
The gilt wood frame is approximately 3" in width in addition to the dimensions given. The frame shown on the painting has been replaced by the frame shown in the exhibit photograph.
Medium:
Oil
Movement & Style:
Old Masters
Period:
Early 18th Century
Condition:
The painting is currently on exhibit, and will be available as of August 18, 2017. In very good condition. Full condition report available on request.
Gallery Location:
Lafayette, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: Original Panini 1stDibs: LU27221923403

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Provenance: Robert Hollberton, Antigua, ca. 1841 Private Collection, New York The present painting depicts Old St. John’s Cathedral on the island of Antigua. The church was erected in the 1720s on the designs of the architect Robert Cullen. It measured 130 feet by 50 feet with north and south porches 23 x 20 ½ feet. The tower, 50 feet high with its cupola, was added in 1789. The church was elevated to the status of a cathedral, but disaster struck in the form of an earthquake that destroyed the building on 8 February 1843. A memorandum of that date relates the event: “On Wednesday, 8th February, 1843, this island was visited by a most terrific and destructive earthquake. At twenty minutes before eleven o’clock in the forenoon, while the bell was ringing for prayers, and the venerable Robert Holberton was in the vestry-room, awaiting the arrival of persons to have their marriage solemnized, before the commencement of the morning service, the whole edifice, from one end to the other, was suddenly and violently agitated. Every one within the church, after the first shock, was compelled to escape for his life. The tower was rent from the top to the bottom; the north dial of the clock precipitated to the ground with a dreadful crash; the east parapet wall of the tower thrown upon the roof of the church; almost the whole of the north-west wall by the north gallery fell out in a mass; the north-east wall was protruded beyond the perpendicular; the altar-piece, the public monument erected to the memory of lord Lavington, and the private monuments, hearing the names of Kelsick, Warner, Otley, and Atkinson, fell down piecemeal inside; a large portion of the top of the east wall fell, and the whole of the south-east wall was precipitated into the churchyard, carrying along with it two of the cast-iron windows, while the other six remained projecting from the walls in which they had been originally inserted; a large pile of heavy cut stones and masses of brick fell down at the south and at the north doors; seven of the large frontpipes of the organ were thrown out by the violence of the shock, and many of the metal and wooden pipes within displaced; the massive basin of the font was tossed from the pedestal on which it rested, and pitched upon the pavement beneath uninjured. Thus, within the space of three minutes, this church was reduced to a pile of crumbling ruins; the walls that were left standing being rent in every part, the main roof only remaining sound, being supported by the hard wood pillars.” The entrance from the southern side into the cathedral, which was erected in 1789, included two imposing statues, one of Saint John the Divine and the other of Saint John the Baptist in flowing robes. It is said that these statues were confiscated by the British Navy from the French ship HMS Temple in Martinique waters in 1756 during the Seven Years’ War and moved to the church. The statues are still in situ and can be seen today, much as they appeared in Bisbee’s painting, but with the new cathedral in the background (Fig. 1). Little is known of the career of Ezra Bisbee. He was born in Sag Harbor, New York in 1808 and appears to have had a career as a political cartoonist and a printmaker. His handsome Portrait of President Andrew Jackson is dated 1833, and several political lithographs...

Category

19th Century Old Masters Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Ezra Bisbee
View of St. John’s Cathedral, Antigua, 1841

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Pair of Italian 18' century Paintings with Gardens

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Category

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Materials

Oil

Pair of Italian 18' century Paintings with Gardens, 1740

$10,783

Pair of Italian 18' century Paintings with Gardens

Located in Rome, IT

Pair of Italian 18' century paintings , oil on canvas with Venetian Palace gardens , antiques sculptures and various figures . Measurements with f...

Category

Mid-18th Century Old Masters Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil

Pair of Italian 18' century Paintings with Gardens, 1740

$10,792

Pair of Italian 18' century Paintings with Gardens

Located in Rome, IT

Pair of Italian 18' century paintings , oil on canvas with Venetian Palace gardens , antiques sculptures and various figures . Measurements with frame cm 75 x101

Category

Mid-18th Century Old Masters Landscape Paintings

Materials

Oil

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$10,783

Early oil depicting the Great Fire of London

Located in London, GB

The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’ Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze. The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...

Category