Gian Paolo Panini Piacenza 1691-1765 Roma

These two paintings are preliminary studies for Panini's large canvas depicting The Opening of the Porta Santa, painted in 1750 and today in a private collection in Rome (Fig. 1).¹  The Porta Santa is one of the five great bronze doors at the entrance to the Basilica of Saint Peter's in Rome, and is opened only during a Papal Jubilee year. Panini's painting was in all probability commissioned by his great patron Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756) as a gift for Pope Benedict XIV (1675-1758), for by 1760 it hung in the Pope's family house, the Palazzo Lambertini in Bologna. Francesco Algarotti, who saw it there, wrote enthusiastically to the Bolognese Prospero Pesci on 12th March of that year: 'Il più bel quadro di tal genere [interiors] è senza dubbio la loggia di San Pietro col papa che apre la porta santa, il quale non è lungi da casa sua nel palagio Lambertini, e a cui potrebbe dare qualche occhiata'  ('The most beautiful painting of this type is without doubt the Loggia of Saint Peter's with the Pope opening the Porta Sacra, which is not far from his house in the Palazzo Lambertini, and which he should go and see').²

Oil sketches like this were clearly an important part of Panini's working method, although relatively few have survived.³  In this case, the overall design was sketched out first in two initial drawings (Paris, Louvre,  inv. nos. 6708 and 6709) and then elaborated in a larger finished drawing (Rome, Pecci-Blunt collection). In the case of particularly large or complex multi-figural compositions such as this, Panini habitually made use of a large number of pencil studies of individual figures. Many of those for the figures and architectural details of the ex-Lambertini painting, for example, survive today in his sketchbook in the British Museum.⁴  These suggest that Panini himself may well have been witness to these events. The first of these oil studies is for the figures in the lower left side of the finished painting. The grouping here of the figures is much more compressed than in the final painting. The large prelate standing just behind the gesturing gentleman in the centre may be taken for Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga, for in the final painting he is transferred to the very centre of the foreground of the composition, where he looks out directly at the spectator. By contrast, the second sketch is changed very little by Panini in the final work. As Arisi observes, the figures climbing on the drapes to get a better view of the proceedings on the right of the sketch are derived from an earlier work, the Visit of Charles III to Benedict XIV at the Quirinale Coffee House of 1746, now in the Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples.⁵  Panini's skill as a figure painter, and the great care that he evidently took with the groups of figures in his paintings demonstrate clearly why he had few rivals among contemporary vedutisti in recording the events of 18th-century Rome.

1  See F. Arisi, under Literature, p. 433, no. 406, reproduced.
2  Opere scelte, Lettere sulla pittura, Milan 1823, vol. III, pp. 232 ff..
3  See for example, the oil study (Chicago, Art Institute) for the foreground figures of his Preparations for a festival on the Piazza Navona of 1731 (Dublin, National Gallery).
4  For a full list of these see Arisi, op. cit..
5  Arisi, ibid., p. 414, no. 368. An oil sketch for the right hand side of this work was with Hall and Knight, London, in 1999.