About the Artwork
In its heyday, the Roman Forum was the site of triumphal processions, elections, gladiatorial matches, and criminal trials. By the time Giovanni Paolo Panini painted it in the eighteenth century, the sprawling Forum comprised only scattered architectural fragments and ruined structures. Panini documented the scene with notable accuracy, making a few small adjustments to the positions of the monuments. A corner of the Arch of Septimius Severus appears at the extreme left. Just beyond are the columns of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina backed by the medieval Torre delle Milizie. Not without humor, Panini has even recorded the contemporary use of the Forum as a cow pasture. Cattle at the center of the composition graze, sit, and calmly investigate their once-imposing historical surroundings.
View of the Roman Forum
1735
Giovanni Paolo Panini
1691-1765
Italian
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 28 15/16 × 53 1/8 inches (73.5 × 135 cm) Framed: 38 1/8 × 24 7/16 × 4 3/8 inches (96.8 × 62 × 11.1 cm)
Paintings
European Painting
Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Edgar B. Whitcomb
47.93
Public Domain
Markings
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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Provenance pageExhibition 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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Pallas 20 (1947) p. 149
Richardson, E.P. "Two Rome Views by Panini." Bulletin of the DIA 27, no. 3 (1948): p. 55-58 (ill.).
Special Exhibition of Painting Notable for the State of Preservation-Condition Excellent. Exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum. Worcester, 1951, no. 19 (ill.).
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): p. 13, no. 9.
Le Vie del Mondo 16, no. 4 (April 1954): p. 370.
Scherer, M. Marvels of Ancient Rome. New York, 1956, p. 115 (ill.).
Briganti, G. and N. Di Carpegna. Il Settecento a Roma. 1959, p. 164.
Treasures from the Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1960, p. 102.
Ruins of Rome. Exh. cat., University of Pennsylvania Art Museum. Philadelphia, 1961, no. 66 (ill.).
Arisi, F. Gian Paolo Panin. Piacenza, 1961, p. 147, cat. 98 (fig. 149).
Painting in Italy in the Eighteenth Century, Rococo to Romanticism. Exh. cat., Minneapolis Institute of Arts, et al. Minneapolis, 1970, no. 87b.
Fredericksen, B. and Zeri, F. Census of pre-19th century Italian paintings in North American Collections, Cambridge, MA, 1972, pp. 156, 580.
Arisi, F. Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del ‘700. Rome, 1986, pp. 119-20, 302, 346, no. 229 (ill.), 374, 376, 407, 420, 428.
The Settecento, Italian Rococo and Early Neo-Classical Paintings 1700-1800. Exh. cat., Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., London, 1987, p. 136.
Kiene, Michael. Panini. Exposition-dossier du département des Peintures, Musée du Louvre, no. 41. Paris, 1992, p. 140.
Arisi, F. "Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1691-1765." 1993, p. 49.
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. 267 (ill.).
Bissell, R.W., A. Derstine, and D. Miller. Masters of Italian Baroque Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts. London, 2005, pp. 9, 10, 138-139, cat. no. 45.
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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Credit Line for Reproduction
Giovanni Paolo Panini, View of the Roman Forum, 1735, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Edgar B. Whitcomb, 47.93.
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