Ancient Rome (painting)

1750s paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini

Roma Antica

Artist| Giovanni Paolo Panini
Year| 1754–1757[1]
Dimensions| 169 cm × 227 cm (67 in × 89 in)[1]
Location| Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Ancient Rome

Artist| Giovanni Paolo Panini
Year| 1757
Medium| Oil on canvas
Dimensions| 172.1 cm × 229.9 cm (67.75 in × 90.5 in)
Location| Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Gallery of Views of Ancient Rome

Artist| Giovanni Paolo Panini
Year| 1759[2]
Dimensions| 231 cm × 303 cm (91 in × 119 in)[2]
Location| Louvre, Paris

Ancient Rome is a trio of almost identical paintings by Italian artist Giovanni Paolo Panini, produced as pendant paintings to Modern Rome for his patron, the comte de Stainville, in the 1750s.[3]

The paintings depict many of the most significant architectural sites and sculptures from ancient Rome, such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Laocoön and His Sons, the Farnese Hercules, the Apollo Belvedere and the Borghese Gladiator.[4] Both Panini and Stainville are featured: Stainville stands holding a guidebook, while Panini appears behind Stainville's armchair.[3][4]

The three versions of Ancient Rome, in order of creation, are located in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre each hold a version of Panini's companion piece, Modern Rome; and the third version is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

## History

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In 1749, Giovanni Pannini painted the Gallery of Cardinal Silvio Valenti-Gonzaga, a painting representing Silvio Valenti-Gonzaga inside a huge gallery whose walls are covered with reproductions of the paintings he owns.[5] This composition, featuring an imaginary architecture dedicated to the exhibition of an artistic collection, is the basis of the Gallery of Views.[6]

Between 1753 and 1757, Count Étienne François de Choiseul, Louis XV's ambassador to Rome in the 1740s, commissioned four paintings from Pannini: the Galleries of Views of Ancient Rome[7] and Modern Rome,[8] a view of the Place Saint-Peter and an Interior of St. Peter's Basilica.[9] These paintings were made between 1754 and 1757. In 1757, the Comte de Choiseul commissioned a second execution of these four paintings from him.

In 1758-1759, Pannini produced another version of the two Galleries on behalf of Claude-François de Montboissier de Canillac de Beaufort, abbot of Canillac and charge d'affaires at the French embassy in Rome. These versions are not identical to the previous ones: the paintings and sculptures are not depicted as hanging in the same places, some are missing between the two versions and the figures do not occupy the same positions.

## References

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1. ^ a b "Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691–1765): Roma Antica, um 1754/57". Staats Galerie.
2. ^ a b "Giovanni Paolo Panini: Gallery of Views of Modern Rome". Louvre.
3. ^ a b "Giovanni Paolo Panini: Modern Rome (52.63.2)". Archived 2009-05-19 at the Wayback Machine In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (October 2006). Retrieved November 28, 2009.
4. ^ a b Art Resource Guide: 18th Century and Early 19th-Century French Art. United States Academic Decathlon. 2009. p. 25.
5. ^ Scullion, Adrienne (1998). "The Art of the Ballets Russes: The Serge Lifar Collection of Theater Designs, Costumes, and Paintings at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. By Alexander Schouvaloff. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum, 1997. Pp. 352 + illus. £50 Hb". Theatre Research International. 23 (2): 186–187. doi:10.1017/s0307883300018630. ISSN 0307-8833. S2CID 251583387.
6. ^ Ferrari, Anna Maria (2003). Panini [Pannini], Giovanni [Gian] Paolo. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t065056.
7. ^ (in English) "Roma Antica". Staatsgalerie. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
8. ^ "Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome". Musée des beaux-arts de Boston.
9. ^ (in English) "Interior of Saint Peter's, Rome, c. 1754". National Gallery of Art.

## External links

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* Media related to Ancient Rome (Giovanni Paolo Pannini) at Wikimedia Commons

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Giovanni Paolo Panini

Paintings|

* Roman Capriccio: The Pantheon and Other Monuments (1735)
* Charles of Bourbon Visiting Pope Benedict XIV at the Coffee House del Quirinale (1746)
* Charles of Bourbon Visiting St Peter's Basilica (1746)
* Musical Feast Given by the Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld for the Marriage of the Dauphin (1747)

Painting series|

* Ancient Rome (1754-1757; 1757; 1759)
* Modern Rome (1757; 1759)

Related|

* Giuseppe Natali (master)
* Francesco Galli Bibiena (master)
* Benedetto Luti (master)

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