Gian Paolo Panini

Georges Vaudoyer (lender to the exhibition in 1934)

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Les artistes français en Italie de Poussin à Renoir, 
1934, no. 617 (as Pernet), not reproduced; label from the exhibition of 1934 and an inscription in pen and ink on the backing: Pernet (né à Paris vers 1763)/ruines animée de personages/ Provenance:collects ion W. 

Hinged at the top to the modern mount . Overall very fresh and in very good condition. Slight thinning of the paper in a very small area in the sky at the top of the architectural cornice to the the left of the sheet. Sold in a modern wooden and gilt style frame.
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This handsome capriccio, in which Panini has crowded but elegantly balanced ancient architecture and sculpture, does not seem to relate to any painted composition by the artist.  The demand for finished drawings such as this (see also lots 24, 26, 113 and 125) was very high among 18th-century collects ors and Panini's views were expensive.  In 1739 the Marchese Capponi appears to have paid 200 scudi for his drawing of the Palazzo della Consulta, Rome, whereas an oil by Vanvitelli cost only around 15 scudi.¹  Panini's drawings were treated like paintings, and were often framed and hung on the wall.  A composition, very similar in its setting and the disposition of the figures, is recorded in reverse in a print by Huquier after Panini.²

This capriccio includes the famous Atlas, from the Farnese collects ion, now in the Archeological Museum, Naples.  This important Roman sculpture of the second century is a marble copy of a Greek original, representing a Titan.  It appears to be the oldest statue of Atlas in existence, and also the earliest known representation of the celestial sphere, which he supports.  The candelabrum base seen to the right was also in Palazzo Farnese in Panini's lifet.mes , before being moved in the late 1760s to the Villa Farnesina.  It is now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly.³

1.  Pannini, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, et al., 1992-93, p. 84 
2.  Ibid., p. 85, fig. 75 
3.  P.P. Bober and R.O. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 2nd Edn, London/Turnhout 2010, pp.103-4, no. 57, reproduced 57i, 57ii