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Lot Essay
Fascinatingly, this picture is the only known example of Guardi replicating a composition by his near contemporary Giovanni Paolo Panini. Guardi here follows the engraving, by Elisabeth Cousinet-Lempereur, after Panini’s composition for Les Trois Colonnes de Campo Vaccino; Panini’s original only recently re-surfaced in a sale at Christie’s, South Kensington on 30 April 2015, lot 567. It was engraved, along with its pendant, The Prediction of a Sybil with the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, while in the collection of Claude-Henri Watelet’s mistress, Madame Maguerite Le Comte. David Marshall notes that the latter may be by Ghisolfi; it was not unusual for Panini to paint pictures to pair with works by Ghisolfi (see David R. Marshall, ‘Early Panini Reconsidered: The Esztergom ‘Preaching of an Apostle’ and the Relationship between Panini and Ghisolf’, Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 18, no. 36., 1997, pp. 137-199). Le Comte travelled to Italy in 1763-4, and probably acquired the pictures then.
Marshall notes that the architectural elements in Panini’s picture, which are repeated here by Guardi, are loosely inspired by Roman examples: ‘Although the three columns are identified in the Lempereur engraving as those of the Temple of Castor Pollux in the Forum, they are not completely based on them: the shafts in our picture are unfluted, the capitals have more in common with those of the Temple of Vespasian, and the arrangement of the entablature does not correspond to the upward tapering of those of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.’ (ibid., pp. 147 and 149).
Marshall notes that the architectural elements in Panini’s picture, which are repeated here by Guardi, are loosely inspired by Roman examples: ‘Although the three columns are identified in the Lempereur engraving as those of the Temple of Castor Pollux in the Forum, they are not completely based on them: the shafts in our picture are unfluted, the capitals have more in common with those of the Temple of Vespasian, and the arrangement of the entablature does not correspond to the upward tapering of those of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.’ (ibid., pp. 147 and 149).