Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765), a Piacenza-born artist, was a celebrated painter of views of modern and ancient Rome and a prolific architect and draftsman during the eighteenth century.
As both painter and teacher, Panini was versatile in his craft and, accordingly, was highly respected for his contribution to the art scene in Italy.
Although Panini worked as an architect, designing Cardinal Valenti’s villa and the chapel in Santa Maria della Scala (1728), and produced fireworks, festival apparatuses, and other ephemeral architectural decorations (and painted magnificent records of them), in the last thirty years of his life he specialized in painting the views of Rome that secured his lasting reputation.
These were of two main types, vedute prese da i luoghi (carefully and accurately rendered views of actual places) and vedute ideate (imaginary views and combinations of particular buildings and monuments).
His views of ancient and modern Rome encompassed practically everything worth noting in the eighteenth-century guidebooks to the Eternal City.
These paintings were not idealized or symbolic representations of Rome’s past and present grandeur, but accurate and objective portrayals of the most famous, most picturesque, or most memorable sights of the city.
More of Giovanni Paolo Panini‘s amazing paintings can be found at museums and websites around the Internet.
Humoring the Goddess 
Thank you so much for reposting! Don’t you just love the depth of the images? I can’t wait to put a lot more in the Gallery!
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You and me both but alas….
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Me too, and paintings of days gone by give me an idea of what life might have been like long ago.
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I love scenery paintings that make you wish you could be there in person.
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What amazing detail!
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Absolutely. Oils turn dark after the ages too. How I wish we could slip back in time to just be able to catch a glimpse of the glory of yesterday. Ah well…
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Problem is that photo’s and sketches don’t last as long as the oilpaintings so we have to come up with a solution to keep pictures for a long long time to come.
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Nothing like a snapshot and sketch to take the place of time consuming painting. It’s nice to see someone’s first hand rendition of buildings and what things really look like back then.
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I totally agree. But you can also see how everything has changed dramatically.
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The paintings take me away to a different time. Even a different world. Could you imagine walking through some of those buildings? Or through a room that had all of those paintings hanging on the walls? Amazing.
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❤
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So many painters of the 18th century did portraits and landscapes. It is nice to see what the world looked like at the time of the painting. Even if some of those paintings are “enhanced” it is wonderful to see that century’s idea of enhanced.
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Thank you so much for reposting!
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Simply outstanding pieces of of classical art, and he captured Rome magnificently…..🏰🌝
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We are so blessed with these old day painters, there were no photo’s yet, otherwise we would not have known so much about history. Although not all of them painted what they could see, like Jeroen Bosch for example 😀
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Reblogged this on Blue Dragon Journal.
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