Giovanni Paolo Panini Piacenza 1691 - 1765 Rome

Dr. Edward Wilmot (1693-1786), created a baronet in 1759, of Chaddesden Hall, Derbyshire;
Thence by direct descent.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a very firm lining and stretcher from the mid twentieth century, and the paint surface has a fairly accentuated canvas texture, with some crests of the weave rather thin in the sky. The restoration is also probably from the sixties and the varnish apparently synthetic, so that there is a slight blanching over much of the surface as the varnish partially detaches itself, clouding the often vivid brushwork for instance of the figures in the lower right area. There is no accidental damage but quite systematic cleaning, and many little strengthening retouchings in the darks of the architecture at lower right, in the darker sides of the columns and in the entablature. This may not be entirely necessary, but the little touches in the blue of the sky do cover thinner areas, and the paint appears rather dull and leached. However the present varnish dims the surface, and a good natural resin varnish would regenerate much of the paint. The lighter architecture is in good condition as is the more finely preserved lower right area where the strong underlying brushwork appears well intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This fine unpublished capriccio is an early work by Giovanni Paolo Panini who was the pre-eminent painter of vedute in Rome in the second and third quarters of the 18th century.  It is an autograph adaptation of Panini's signed painting formerly in the Crawford collection, London, which is of square rather than horizontal format.¹  The figures in each version are for the most part identical, as is the architecture (except for minor differences, such as the urns surmounting the balustrade of the stone palace in the middleground), but Panini appears to have adapted his composition here to fit more comfortably into the panoramic, rectangular-shaped canvas.  Arisi dated the ex-Crawford picture to the mid-1710s by comparison with Panini’s Architectural capriccio with a pool and bathers in the Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomfield, which he dates to 1715-16 and considers slightly later in date to the present work.²  The rather one-sided composition, heavier on the right with the buildings receding and lighter on the left with a more distant view of the pool beyond, might suggest that the painting may originally have had a pendant.  It echoes, in reverse, the composition of Panini’s Architectural capriccio with figures playing about a fountain, formerly in the collection of Prof. Costantino Nigro, Genoa.³  That painting was also considered a relatively early work by Arisi and by Brunetti before him; the latter noting the influence of Andrea Locatelli, with whom Panini trained, in both the architecture and figures. Indeed the free-standing sculpture of a satyr, standing on the balustrade at the extreme right of this composition, is extremely similar to that in a painting ascribed to the youthful Panini by Arisi but attributed to Locatelli by Busiri Vici.⁴

We are grateful to Prof. David R. Marshall for endorsing the attribution to Panini after first hand inspection and for suggesting a date of execution circa 1716-18, just prior to the artist’s admission to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1718-19.

1  Oil on canvas, 93 by 93 cm.; signed with monogram lower left: G.P.P.; see F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del ’700, Rome 1986, p. 247, cat. no. 61, reproduced. The painting was recently offered for sale in New York, Christie’s, 23 January 2004, lot 86, where it appeared of about the same, if not slightly inferior, quality to the present work.
2  Arisi, op. cit., p. 250, cat. no. 64, reproduced.
3  Oil on canvas, 73 by 102 cm.; Arisi, ibid., p. 252, cat. no. 67, reproduced.
4  The painting, in a private collection in Rome, is dated by Arisi to circa 1715 or shortly afterwards (ibid., p. 253, cat. no. 70, reproduced) whereas Busiri Vici believes the work to be by Andrea Locatelli and to have been painted before 1715 (A. Busiri Vici, Andrea Locatelli e il paesaggio romano del settecento, Rome 1976, cat. no. 207, reproduced in colour ifg. 73a).