Giovanni Paolo Panini

Pannini, Giovanni Paolo
Panini, Gian Paolo

Roman, 1691 - 1765

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Italian painter and architect (1691–1765)

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The soaring, gilded vault of a central aisle of the inside of a church fills this horizontal painting. The ceiling of the nave curves up and away from us like a tunnel. It is lined with coffers, which have inset panels, decorated with gold. The light-filled nave angles down from the top center of the composition toward the lower left as it moves away from us. The white stone pillars supporting the barrel vault are intricately carved and decorated with pudgy, winged cherubs holding portraits of men, and aisles run parallel to the central nave to our left and right. In the side aisles, pink marble columns flank altars in chapels. At the far end of the church, the nave is interrupted where it opens into the light-filled crossing, before continuing beyond. Marking the space where the long hall of the church is intersected by a shorter arm to create a cross shape is a structure made of four twisting columns supporting a pointed canopy, all cast in bronze. Tiny men and women pray or gather in pairs and small groups along the nave. Some wear tattered clothing and others are elegantly dressed.
Giovanni Paolo Panini, Interior of Saint Peter's, Rome, c. 1754, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1968.13.2

Interior of Saint Peter's, Rome

Giovanni Paolo Panini · c. 1754 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1968.13.2

Dozens of men and women wander through a tall interior space lined with statues and columns and topped by a soaring domed roof in this vertical painting. The people are small in scale within the cavernous space. The women wear long, full dresses and the men wear knee-length waistcoats and stockings in shades of dark blue, crimson red, pine green, marigold orange, or brown. Three people wear clothing of the clergy: two of them, on our left, wear long, ginger-brown robes under white mantles, and a third person on our right wears a hip-length, diaphanous white cape over a long dark blue robe. The crowd strolls, kneels, converses, or leans back to look up at the high ceiling overhead, which has a round opening at its apex. A glimpse white of azure-blue sky with white clouds is visible through the opening. The interior is divided into three levels. The ground level has five niches lining the walls, each with a white stone statue of a man or woman standing inside. Each statue is at least three times the height of the people in the space below. The three niches closest to us on our left and right have semicircular pediments with garnet-red or moss-green columns flanking the statues. Two niches at the far end have triangular pediments and honey-gold columns. Each niche sits on a wide base, presumably an altar, and is surrounded by marbled gold and purple panels set against a sage-green background. Sets of three honey-gold columns line the wall between each niche. Oversized, copper-green double doors are swung inward at the far side of the space. More people, a sunlit obelisk, blue sky, and slivers of other buildings are visible through the doorway. The second level of the interior has windows spaced across walls otherwise covered with white, blue, and mauve-pink panels. An inscription running around the building between the first and second level reads, “DOMINVM IN SANCTIS EIVS LAVS EIVS IN ECCLE.” The third level is the domed pewter-gray ceiling with coffers, like inwardly stepped panels. The floor is patterned with alternating circles and rectangles in sage green or light brown.
Giovanni Paolo Panini, Interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 1734, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.24

Interior of the Pantheon, Rome

Giovanni Paolo Panini · c. 1734 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1939.1.24

Giovanni Paolo Panini, Saint Paul Preaching in Athens, 1734, pen and black and gray ink with gray wash, heightened with white gouache, on tan prepared paper, Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2010.93.21

Saint Paul Preaching in Athens

Giovanni Paolo Panini · 1734 · pen and black and gray ink with gray wash, heightened with white gouache, on tan prepared paper ·  Accession ID  2010.93.21

Bibliography

1986

  • Arisi, Ferdinando. Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma della Roma del '700. Rome, 1986.

1992

  • Kiene, Michael. Panini. Exh. cat. Musée du Louvre, Paris; Museo Civico, Piacenza; Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig. Paris, 1992-1993.

1993

  • Arisi, Ferdinando, ed. Giovanni Paolo Panini 1691-1765. Exh. cat. Palazzo Gotico, Piacenza. Milan, 1993.

1996

  • De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 188-189.