Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini (17 June 1691 – 21 October 1765) was an Italian painter and

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

who worked in Rome and is primarily known as one of the '' vedutisti'' ("view painters"). As a painter, Panini is best known for his vistas of Rome, in which he took a particular interest in the city's antiquities. Among his most famous works are his view of the interior of the

Pantheon Pantheon may refer to: * Pantheon (religion), a set of gods belonging to a particular religion or tradition, and a temple or sacred building Arts and entertainment Comics *Pantheon (Marvel Comics), a fictional organization * ''Pantheon'' (Lone S ...

(on behalf of

Francesco Algarotti Count Francesco Algarotti (11 December 1712 – 3 May 1764) was an Italian polymath, philosopher, poet, essayist, anglophile, art critic and art collector. He was a man of broad knowledge, an expert in Newtonianism, architecture and opera. He wa ...

), and his ''vedute''—paintings of picture galleries containing views of Rome. Most of his works, especially those of ruins, have a fanciful and unreal embellishment characteristic of '' capriccio'' themes. In this they resemble the ''capricci'' of

Marco Ricci Marco Ricci (6 June 1676 – 21 January 1730) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. Early years He was born at Belluno and received his first instruction in art from his uncle, Sebastiano Ricci, likely in Milan in 1694–6.Giacometti, Mar ...

. Panini also painted portraits, including one of

Pope Benedict XIV Pope Benedict XIV ( la, Benedictus XIV; it, Benedetto XIV; 31 March 1675 – 3 May 1758), born Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 17 August 1740 to his death in May 1758.Antipope ...

Biography

As a young man, Panini trained in his native town of

Piacenza Piacenza (; egl, label= Piacentino, Piaṡëinsa ; ) is a city and in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, and the capital of the eponymous province. As of 2022, Piacenza is the ninth largest city in the region by population, with over ...

, under

Giuseppe Natali Giuseppe Natali (1652–1722) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Cremona and Lombardy. Biography He was born in Casalmaggiore, near Cremona. He was the son of a Giovanni Battista Natali (Bologna, c 1630 - Cremona, c ...

and Andrea Galluzzi, and with stage designer

Francesco Galli-Bibiena Francesco Galli, called Francesco da Bibiena (or da Bibbiena), a member of the theatrical Galli da Bibiena family and younger brother of Ferdinando Galli, was born at Bologna in 1659. He first studied under Lorenzo Pasinelli; but he was afterwa ...

. In 1711, he moved to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, where he studied drawing with

Benedetto Luti Benedetto Luti (17 November 1666 – 17 June 1724) was an Italian painter. Early life Luti was born in Florence on 17 November 1666. Career In 1691, he moved to Rome, where he was patronized by Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, an en ...

. In Rome, Panini earned a name for himself as a decorator of palaces. Some of his works included the Villa Patrizi (1719–1725), the Palazzo de Carolis (1720), and the

Seminario Romano The Roman Colleges, also referred to as the Pontifical Colleges in Rome, are institutions established and maintained in Rome for the education of future ecclesiastics of the Catholic Church. Traditionally many were for students of a particular nati ...

(1721–1722). In 1719, Panini was admitted to the ''Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon''. He taught in Rome at the ''

Accademia di San Luca The Accademia di San Luca (the "Academy of Saint Luke") is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its fir ...

'' and the ''Académie de France'', where he is said to have influenced

Jean-Honoré Fragonard Jean-Honoré Fragonard (; 5 April 1732 (birth/baptism certificate) – 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific ar ...

. In 1754, he served as the prince (director) of the ''

''. The Spanish monarchs appreciated his work in such a way that, commissioned by

Filippo Juvarra Filippo is an Italian male given name, which is the equivalent of the English name Philip, from the Greek ''Philippos'', meaning "amante dei cavalli".''Behind the Name''"Given Name Philip" Retrieved on 23 January 2016. The female variant is Filip ...

, he sent paintings to decorate the Lacquer Room of the

Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso The Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso (Spanish: ''Palacio Real de La Granja de San Ildefonso''), known as La Granja, is an early 18th-century palace in the small town of San Ildefonso, located in the hills near Segovia and north of Madri ...

. In addition, King Carlos IV, when he was Prince, bought several of his works that are still preserved in the

Prado Museum The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...

and in the royal palaces. Panini died in Rome on 21 October 1765.Anna Maria Ferrari.
Panini, Giovanni Paolo
" Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 27 March 2010.

Legacy

Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-729-0001-23, Italien, Überführung von Kunstschätzen

Panini's studio included

Hubert Robert Hubert Robert (22 May 1733 – 15 April 1808) was a French painter in the school of Romanticism, noted especially for his landscape paintings and capricci, or semi-fictitious picturesque depictions of ruins in Italy and of France.Jean de Cayeux. ...

and his son Francesco Panini. His style influenced other vedutisti, such as his pupils

Antonio Joli Antonio Francesco Lodovico Joli (13 March 1700 – 29 April 1777) was an Italian painter of ''vedute'' and ''capricci''. Biography Born in Modena, he first was apprenticed to Rafaello Rinaldi. He then studied in Rome under Giovanni Paolo Pa ...

and

Charles-Louis Clérisseau Charles-Louis Clérisseau (28 August 1721 – 9 January 1820) was a French architect, draughtsman, antiquary, and artist who became a leading authority on ancient Roman architecture and Roman ruins in Italy and France. With his influence extending t ...

, as well as

Canaletto Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto (), was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. Painter of city views or ...

and

Bernardo Bellotto Bernardo Bellotto (c. 1721/2 or 30 January 172117 November 1780), was an Italian urban landscape painter or ''vedutista'', and printmaker in etching famous for his ''vedute'' of European cities – Dresden, Vienna, Turin, and Warsaw. He was ...

, who sought to meet the need of visitors for painted "postcards" depicting the Italian environs. Some British landscape painters, such as Marlow, Skelton and Wright of Derby, also imitated his capricci. In addition to being a painter and architect, Panini was a professor of perspective and optics at the French Academy of Rome. His masterful use of perspective was later the inspiration for the creation of the "

Panini Projection Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Commonly performed through the use of computer software, most ...

", which is instrumental in rendering panoramic views.

https://www.facebook.com/paniniprojection] Panini's works are held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the

, the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

, the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, the

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (in Spanish, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (), named after its founder), or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of the city's main boulevards. I ...

, the Hermitage, the

Pushkin Museum The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (russian: Музей изобразительных искусств имени А. С. Пушкина, abbreviated as ) is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just oppo ...

, the

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (, "State Gallery") is an art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, it opened in 1843. In 1984, the opening of the Neue Staatsgalerie (''New State Gallery'') designed by James Stirling transformed the once provincial gallery ...

, the

Staatliche Museen The Berlin State Museums (german: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters, several research institutes, libraries, and supporting facilities. They are overseen ...

, the

Palazzo del Quirinale The Quirinal Palace ( it, Palazzo del Quirinale ) is a historic building in Rome, Italy, one of the three current official residences of the president of the Italian Republic, together with Villa Rosebery in Naples and the Tenuta di Castelporzia ...

, the

Toledo Museum of Art The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...

, the

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...

, the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, the

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...

, the

Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the list of largest art museums, largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation a ...

, the

Museum of Fine Arts Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, the

Getty Center The Getty Center, in Los Angeles, California, is a campus of the Getty Museum and other programs of the Getty Trust. The $1.3 billion center opened to the public on December 16, 1997 and is well known for its architecture, gardens, and views over ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art. In 2007, ''Time'' magaz ...

, the

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the su ...

, the

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century. The museum's collection was amassed ...

, the

Harvard Art Museums The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

, the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

, and the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

Gallery

History paintings History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...

Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple'' (ca. 1724), oil on canvas, 74 x 99 cm.,

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (in Spanish, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (), named after its founder), or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of the city's main boulevards. I ...

File:Giovanni Paolo Panini The Wedding at Cana, about 1725.jpg, ''

The Wedding at Cana ''The Wedding Feast at Cana'' (''Nozze di Cana'', 1562–1563), by Paolo Veronese, is a representational painting that depicts the biblical story of the Marriage at Cana, at which Jesus miraculously converts water into red wine (John 2:1–11). ...

'' (ca. 1725), oil on canvas, 99.2 × 137.2 cm.,

Speed Art Museum The Speed Art Museum, originally known as the J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, now colloquially referred to as the Speed by locals, is the oldest and largest art museum in Kentucky. It was established in 1927 in Louisville, Kentucky on Third Street ...

File:Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765) - Marcus Curtius Leaping into the Gulf - 207 - Fitzwilliam Museum.jpg, ''

Marcus Curtius Marcus Curtius is a mythological young Roman who offered himself to the gods of Hades. He is mentioned shortly by Varro and at length by Livius. He is the legendary namesake of the Lacus Curtius in the Roman Forum, the site of his supposed sacr ...

Leaping into the Gulf'' (no date), oil on canvas, 73.7 x 98.1 cm.,

Fitzwilliam Museum The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Vis ...

File:Museo diocesano (Milan) Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Apollo e Marsia (cropped).jpg, ''

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...

and

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

'' (no date), oil on canvas, Diocesan Museum of Milan

Capriccios

National Museum, Warsaw The National Museum in Warsaw ( pl, Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie), popularly abbreviated as MNW, is a national museum in Warsaw, one of the largest museums in Poland and the largest in the capital. It comprises a rich collection of ancient art ( Eg ...

Biography

Legacy

Gallery

History paintings History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...

Capriccios

Veduta A ''veduta'' (Italian for "view"; plural ''vedute'') is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often, print of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of ''vedute'' are referred to as ''vedutisti''. Origins This genre ...
(contemporary Rome)

Drawings

References

Further reading

External links

Biography

Legacy

Gallery

History paintings History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...

Capriccios

Veduta A ''veduta'' (Italian for "view"; plural ''vedute'') is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often, print of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of ''vedute'' are referred to as ''vedutisti''. Origins This genre ... (contemporary Rome)

Drawings

References

Further reading

External links

Veduta A ''veduta'' (Italian for "view"; plural ''vedute'') is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, more often, print of a cityscape or some other vista. The painters of ''vedute'' are referred to as ''vedutisti''. Origins This genre ...
(contemporary Rome)