Architectural Capriccio with Figures

“Rome was! But neither years nor flames nor sword can wreck her beauty. The care of men so built Rome that no effort of the gods can undo her,” wrote the French monk, Hildebert de Lavardin, on his visit to Rome in 1116. An appreciation for the lyrical grandeur of the ruin dates as far back as Ancient Greece and Rome and reached an almost scientific level of consideration during the Renaissance. To the intellectual of the Baroque and Romantic eras, ruins evoked both the passage of time and the grandeur of the classical past.

Giovanni Paolo Panini’s paintings eternalized these alluring, deteriorating structures. Upon arriving in Rome in 1711, Panini soon established a life-long reputation as the most admired Roman view painter, prized for his ability to balance the purely factual veduta with the romantic, fantastical capriccio. Typically portraying the city’s most recognizable monuments set in imaginary surroundings, Pannini’s landscapes resonated with the classicizing aesthetics of Clement XII Corsini and the aristocratic Grand Tourists who sought to escape into a distant time and place. Attesting to his popularity, Panini became a member of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon in 1718 and was nominated to the Accademia di San Luca in 1719; by 1732 he became a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris – a rare honor bestowed upon an Italian artist.

The present painting, datable to ca. 1730, is typical of Panini’s distinctive approach to the capriccio, in which ancient ruins alluding to the Roman Forum provide the setting for the bucolic protagonists.[1] Imbued with the drama of the Baroque, a golden evening sun bathes relaxed soldiers and ancient ruins in a soft light. The sculptural group of the horse and man on the pedestal to the left is based on the statue of Castor, one of the two Dioscuri. Castor and the corresponding sculpture of Pollux were found in pieces in the sixteenth century and subsequently reconstructed and placed at the top of Michelangelo’s cordonata leading up to the Capitoline Hill. The fragment of a frieze with griffins, a motif that Panini also repeated, is based on the frieze of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina in the Forum.[2]

Panini’s style was influenced by the classical ruin paintings of Giovanni Ghisolfi, the landscapes of Jan Van Bloemen, and the topographical views of Gaspar Van Wittel. Patronized by Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, who served as the chargé d’affaires to Louis XV in Rome from 1724 to 1732, and by the Duc de Choiseul, French Ambassador to Benedict XIV, Panini influenced younger French painters like Claude-Joseph Vernet, Hubert Robert, and Jean-Nicolas Servandoni, who traveled to Rome to complete their education.❖

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