View of the Colosseum

1735

Giovanni Paolo Panini Italian, 1691-1765

On View

European: Grand Tour of Italy-Rome, Level 2, South Wing

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About the Artwork

Giovanni Paolo Panini was known for his views of celebrated sites in Rome, the city in which he lived and worked. The Colosseum, the elliptical amphitheater in the center of Rome, was undoubtedly the most famous site in the city. In ancient times, it was used for gladiator contests, animal hunts, executions, and even mock sea battles. By the eighteenth century, its travertine and concrete walls had partly crumbled, but it remained the largest standing amphitheater in the world. Panini has cleverly introduced touches of local color — conversing figures, a dog, a woman on horseback — that underline the monument’s enormous scale but also its omnipresence in daily Roman life. Panini’s companion painting of the Forum, located just west of the Colosseum, is also in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Title View of the Colosseum

Artwork Date 1735

Artist Giovanni Paolo Panini

Life Dates 1691-1765

Nationality Please note: Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events. Some definitions include: Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation. Italian

Culture Please note: Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group. Unknown

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions Unframed: 29 3/16 × 53 inches (74.2 × 134.6 cm) Framed: 38 1/4 × 24 7/16 × 4 3/8 inches (97.2 × 62 × 11.1 cm)

Classification Paintings

Department European Painting

Credit Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Edgar B. Whitcomb

Accession Number This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection. Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings. For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups. 47.94

Markings

Signed Signed and dated, on stone fragment, at lower right: I. P. PANINI/ Romae 1735

Provenance

possibly Duke of Norfolk (Beech Hill, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England);
1947, (Arturo Grassi, New York, New York, USA);
1947-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

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Exhibition History

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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.

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Published References

Pallas 20 (1947) p. 149

Richardson, E.P. "Two Rome Views by Panini." Bulletin of the DIA 27, no. 3 (1948): p. 55-58.

Richardson, E.P. Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture given by Edgar B. Whitcomb and Anna Scripps Whitcomb to the Detroit Institutes of Art. Detroit, 1954, p. 97 (ill.).

Wunder, R.P. "Two Roman Vedute by Panini in the Walters Art Gallery." Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 17 (1954): pp. 13-26, pp. 13, 16, fig. 5.

Le Vie del Mondo 16, no. 4 (April 1954): p. 370.

Treasures from the Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1960, p. 102.

Ruins of Rome. Exh. cat., University of Pennsylvania Art Museum. Philadelphia, 1961, no. 60 (ill.).

Arisi, F. Gian Paolo Panini. Piacenza, 1961, p. 148, no. 99 (fig. 150).

Treasures from the Detroit Institute of Arts, 3rd ed. 1966, p. 108 (ill.).

Painting in Italy in the Eighteenth Century, Rococo to Romanticism. Exh. cat., Minneapolis Institute of Arts, et al. Minneapolis, 1970, no. 87a.

Fredericksen, B. and Zeri, F. Census of Pre-19th Century Italian Paintings in North American Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972, p. 156.

Arisi, F. Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del ‘700. Rome, 1986, pp. 119-20, 346, no. 230 (ill.).

McCormick, T.J. Charles-Louis Clérisseau and the Genesis of Neo-classicism. New York, 1990, pp. 4, 6 (fig. 5).

Arisi, F. "Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1691-1765." 1993, p. 14.

Cornforth, J. "Farnsborough Hall Warwickshire, II: A Property of the National Trust and the Home of Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Holbech." Country Life 190, no. 29 (1996): p. 51.

Wissman, F.W. European Vistas: Cultural Landscapes. Detroit, 2000, pp. 42-43, 46 (ill.).

Rishel, J. and E.P. Bowron. The Splendor of Rome: Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century. Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts. Philadelphia and Houston, 2000, pp. 419-421, cat. 268 (ill.).

Bissell, R.W., A. Derstine, and D. Miller. Masters of Italian Baroque Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts. London, 2005, pp. 9, 10, 136-137, cat. no. 44.

Derstine, Andria. "The Detroit Institute of Arts and Italian Baroque Painting." In Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America, ed. Edgar Peters Bowron. University Park, 2017, p. 97.

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Catalogue Raisoneé

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Credit Line for Reproduction

Giovanni Paolo Panini, View of the Colosseum, 1735, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Edgar B. Whitcomb, 47.94.