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Lot Essay
This is the first known dated interior of the Pantheon by Panini. The artist can be considered the father of the Italian interior view painters; no interior views are known by his fellow citizen Vanvitelli. Professor Ferdinando Arisi previously recorded the date of the present picture as 1734, which is also the date of a picture in a private collection in New York. Thus he believed both pictures to be the first dated views of the Pantheon by the artist (F. Arisi, loc. cit., 1986; F. Arisi, loc. cit., 1993). However, after confirmation that the date is in fact 1732, he confirms that this is Panini's first dated view of the Pantheon (oral communication, 10 May 1999).
The massive Corinthian columns, which contribute so notably to the monumentality of this composition, are not included in the 1734 composition; there the artist placed himself in front of the columns under the cupola. Both compositions were to become immensely popular and numerous later versions are known. A particularly successful device in this painting is the figure who leans over the edge of the oculus in the cupola. The ray of sun that falls through the oculus and moves through the northern half of the building as the day progresses indicates that the time of day represented is approximately three o'clock in the afternoon.
That Panini relied for his staffage on his sketches of men, women, monks and even Swiss Guards, as, for example, the one depicted kneeling in front of an altar on the right, is made evident by their reappearance in other pictures by the artist. The man placed in the middle of this picture, who faces the spectator and is dressed in white with a black cloak around his waist, is the subject of a drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (no. KdZ 17583; see the catalogue of the exhibition, Panini, Louvre, Paris, 15 October 1992-15 February 1993, fig. 54). As Ferdinando Arisi points out, this figure is also found in other important views by the artist including The Interior of the Pantheon datable to circa 1740, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (F. Arisi, op. cit., no. 283).
The massive Corinthian columns, which contribute so notably to the monumentality of this composition, are not included in the 1734 composition; there the artist placed himself in front of the columns under the cupola. Both compositions were to become immensely popular and numerous later versions are known. A particularly successful device in this painting is the figure who leans over the edge of the oculus in the cupola. The ray of sun that falls through the oculus and moves through the northern half of the building as the day progresses indicates that the time of day represented is approximately three o'clock in the afternoon.
That Panini relied for his staffage on his sketches of men, women, monks and even Swiss Guards, as, for example, the one depicted kneeling in front of an altar on the right, is made evident by their reappearance in other pictures by the artist. The man placed in the middle of this picture, who faces the spectator and is dressed in white with a black cloak around his waist, is the subject of a drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (no. KdZ 17583; see the catalogue of the exhibition, Panini, Louvre, Paris, 15 October 1992-15 February 1993, fig. 54). As Ferdinando Arisi points out, this figure is also found in other important views by the artist including The Interior of the Pantheon datable to circa 1740, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (F. Arisi, op. cit., no. 283).