(Piacenza 1691–1765 Rome)
A capriccio with figures among the ruins of the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the Pantheon, the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, the Arch of Titus, the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius and other monuments,
oil on canvas, 112 x 84 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Rome

The present painting is an imaginary view or veduta ideata with an arrangement of celebrated Roman monuments and ruins. The following ruins are represented from left to right: the three columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum, the Temple of Sybille at Tivoli, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, the bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, the Arch of Titus seen from the Colosseum side, the Obelisk from the Circus Maximus now located in the Piazza del Popolo, the Pantheon, slightly orientated to the right, and in the foreground the Borghese Vase. The relief on the left is unidentified and was probably imaginary. Several figures in antique dress animate the scene.

The present work is a larger variant of a work by Giovanni Paolo Panini (69 x 79 cm) which is in a private collection, and of which various replicas and copies are known. It is the pendant to another imaginary view or veduta ideata also in a private collection, which represents the Colosseum, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, the Arch of Constantine and the Column of Trajan (see F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del ‘700, Rome 1986, p. 460, n. 463, and p. 461, n. 464).

The present work differs because of its broader compositional structure, which allows for the insertion of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius seen here in the centre distance, which is lacking from Panini’s painting. The latter work was probably kept in the master’s studio where his pupils could make derivations from it, inserting new details, which as in the present case, distinguish it from the other versions. Panini’s view was probably executed in the years around the late 1750s and early 1760s: here he renews the motif of the Pantheon viewed frontally, which he had already used in examples of his work dating to the late 1730s, by orientating the monument slightly to the right.