Day 239 - Rome via Panini

February 26, 2021

The theme of Gallery 620 is The Grand Tour - what the well-off, well-bred young man might see if he made this excursion in the 18th century. Since Italy was the principal destination of The Grand Tour, most of the paintings are by Italian artists and depict Italian scenes. There are lots of Canalettos and Guardis, and the surprise of my visit is to discover that the two artists, far from being interchangeable, as I had previously supposed, had quite distinctive styles: Canaletto painted with almost photographic precision, while Guardi's brushstrokes are much freer, almost impressionistic. 

But inevitably, the two paintings I've chosen to write about are by Giovanni Paolo Panini, who was born in Piacenza in 1691 and died in Rome in 1765. I suspect the entry is an homage to Panini's painting of the interior of the Pantheon, now in the National Gallery in Washington, a nicely framed repro of which hung in my office for many years. ("I work so that I can take vacations in Rome," is, I suppose the visual message I was conveying.)  The work was officially lost in transit when I retired; I suspect that someone along the line liked it and appropriated it. 

I know that Panini's works often functioned as souvenirs - giant postcards that visiting Brits and others could take home with them - though I wonder how they were shipped: were the paintings complete with frames, or were the canvases just rolled up and put in a trunk? In any case, the two Met paintings are pendants (a new term for me, meaning "meant to be hung together," I guess) and are entitled "Ancient Rome" and "Modern Rome." Measuring roughly 7 feet wide and 5 feet high, each shows a large interior space marked by a cupola and Corinthian-topped pillars or pilasters and crowded with images of the sights of either ancient Rome or monuments of the preceding few centuries. In ancient Rome, I pat myself on the back for recognizing the Pantheon, the Colosseum, Trajan's Column, the Arch of Titus, and the Laocoon; in modern Rome, I spot the Trevi Fountain, the Piazza Navona,  the obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo and, unmissably, Michelangelo's Moses. But what I fail to take note of until I read the placard (so much for my ability to see the obvious, much less my critical sensibility),  is that, in both paintings, these landmarks are, except for the statues, shown in gold frames, as if the settings being depicted are very fancy art galleries. So the painting becomes about the ability of the painter to capture great images of the past through art.

The placard explains that the paintings were commissioned by the Duke de Choiseul, the French ambassador to Rome from 1753 to 1757. Since the paintings were both executed in 1757, Choiseul must have given them to himself as a farewell present. I wonder if they were kept together for the next couple of hundred years, until the Met acquired them in 1952.