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Characters conversing at the foot of an antique portico, next to a fountain
Oil on canvas
Presented in a beautiful gilded wood frame with gadroon and pearl motifs (18th century).
Total dimensions: 90 x 77 cm. Canvas alone: 75 x 60 cm.
Giovanni Paolo Panini (Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, 1691 - Rome, 1765) was an Italian Baroque painter.
From his early training among the Bibbiena family, he retained a taste for scenography that would mark him throughout his career in Rome, where he settled in 1711.
There, he was first a pupil of B. Luti, whose Maratta-style classicism influenced him for only a short time.
As a painter, Panini is best known for his views of Rome, in which he shows a particular interest in the city's antiquities. Among his most famous works are the views of the Pantheon, and his vedute and gallery paintings of views of Rome. Most of his works, especially those of ruins, reflect this painter's fantasy and taste for the unreal and imaginary. This is an important characteristic of this artist known as "capriccio". Panini also painted portraits, including one for Pope Benedict XIV.
His style influenced a number of vedutists, such as his pupil Antonio Joli, as well as Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto and Hubert Robert, who inherited above all his interest in ancient ruins.
His compositions, sometimes immense, often have the value of veritable "slices of life" cut out of Rome's ancient and modern monuments (Piazza del Quirinale and Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, 1742, Rome, Quirinale); they remain among the most seductive testimonies of the period. Gifted with an exceptional talent for scenography, Pannini always imbued his representations with a grandiose sense of space; he achieved monumental effects, contrasting with the verve displayed in the description of the figurines that populate his scenes...
Provenance :
Former collection of King Louis Philippe (1773-1850), according to an inscription on the back of the canvas.
Fine original condition.
