Gian Paolo Panini

Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Il Settecento a Roma, 1959, no. 2426, not reproduced

F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini, Piacenza 1961, p. 245, no. 80, reproduced fig. 359, and p. 181, under no. 180

Laid down on an old backing with old attribution to Panini. It is reiforced from the back with a strip of paper at the height where the two pieces of paper are joined together. There are a number of tears around the joined sheets. A little rectangular piece of paper appears to be cut out to the left of the club of the statue of Hercules. The paper appears to be quite thick and strong, it has two manufacturing defects at the top edge. There are tears and crcaks along the right and left and bottom margins. There is scattered foxing particularly at the top and to the right of the sheet. Overall the image is strong and watercolor not faded. Sold in a modern gilt frame.
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Dated by Arisi to 1730, this very rare view of a section of the courtyard of the famous Palazzo Farnese, executed in pen and ink and watercolor by Panini, includes still in situ one of the most emblematic and renowned statues of ancient Rome, the Farnese Hercules.  To the right Panini has drawn another ancient statue, a Female holding a laurel wreath, originally in the same courtyard, as well as the fragmentary Hermes, just visible, facing the statue of Hercules.  All three are now in the Archeological Museum, Naples. This view must have been very popular, but Panini seems never to have executed a painted version or a variant of the subject, although some of his painted capricci do include these sculptures, for example the Capriccio with Roman monuments now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.¹  

It is interesting to note that Panini has drawn the main architectural structure of the courtyard using a ruler and the lines are finely drawn in pen and black ink with a great degree of accuracy, in contrast with the thicker pen and gray wash with which he has drawn, more freely, the rest of the architecture, the sculptures, and the figures.  He changed the composition slightly in the far right corner by inserting the two figures conversing. The use of colored washes enlivens the whole composition.

The Hercules is first definitely recorded in 1556 in the first courtyard of Palazzo Farnese by Ulisse Aldrovandi, based on notes he had made six years earlier.²  This sculptural masterpiece was said to have been found in the Baths of Caracalla.  The statue's enormous size made it hard to copy, but a number of drawings and prints of it were nonetheless made, as many depicting the back of the figure as the front.  It remained in situ until 1787, when the Farnese collection of antiquities was sent to Naples, to the regret of many artists who felt that with the loss of such a sculpture Rome was deprived of one of the most revered and important artistic treasures of antiquity.

1.  F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini, Piacenza 1961, p. 181, no. 180, reproduced fig. 235

2.  U. Aldrovandi, 'Delle Statue Antiche, che per tutta Roma, in diversi luoghi, & case si veggono', Lucio Mauro, Le Antichità della Città di Roma, Venice 1556, pp. 157-8