GIOVANNI PAOLO PANINI (b.Piacenza 1691 – 1765 d.Rome, Italian)
Imaginary Palaces with the Death of Ananias, and with David, Bathsheba and Solomon
Oil on canvas
51 ⅞ x 24 inches (131.7 x 61 cm) each
Price: Sold
Provenance:
Private collection, The Netherlands.
These two architectural capricci date from the early career of Panini, the leading eighteenth century specialist in the genre in Rome. Born in Piacenza in 1691, the artist moved to Rome in 1711 and his admission to the Accademia di San Luca in late 1719 launched him into a busy and successful career. Panini won an important commission for a fresco cycle at the Villa Patrizi which engaged him between 1719 and 1726 (now destroyed); other commissions included frescoes for the Palazzo de Carolis, the Palazzo del Drago, and for the mezzanine of the Palazzo del Quirinale. Panini's output at the earliest stage includes a landscape dated 1711 (Genoa, private collection; F. Arisi, Giovanni Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del ’700, Rome, 1986, p. 229, no. 25bis, illustrated), some of the Patrizi gouaches (Rome, Marchese Patrizi collection; ibid., nos. 117-8, receipt dated January 1715), a Triumphal arch with figures in the Detroit Institute of Art (ibid., no. 123, probably acquired on a Grand Tour in 1717-19) and the work submitted for entrance to Accademia di San Luca (Rome, Accademia di San Luca; ibid., no. 114, accepted in December 1719).
We are grateful to Dr. David Marshall for confirming the attribution from digital images. These are early works, datable to c. 1716/18. A capriccio of similar date and scale, though of slightly broader format, is in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (ibid., p. 249, no. 63, illustrated). In that painting, signed ‘I.P.Panini’, the figures, enacting The Sacrifice of Callirhoe are particularly close in style. Dr Marshall also notes similarities with the pair of capricci sold at Christie’s, London, 2 July 2013, lot 46 (now at Easton Neston) which he dates towards 1722, and the pair in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (ibid., nos. 76-7, both illustrated).
These paintings are also sold with a certificate by Professor Giancarlo Sestieri, dated 7 March 2016.