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Giovanni Paolo Panini (1692 - 1795)

Ruins of a Temple with an Apostle Preaching , c.1719

This small, richly coloured painting is cleverly composed to create an atmospheric scene. The composition is elaborate, using classical architecture to create an interesting structure in which figures are little more than decoration. Groups of figures, such as the two soldiers, lower right, were often recycled from earlier works. This architectural fantasy of ruined arches and pillars also includes some examples of antique sculpture: a statue of Achilles and the so-called tomb of Achilles, which often feature in similar works. The artist has added life to the scene with gesturing figures, a crowd of soldiers and old men listening to a bearded preacher, who may represent the apostle St Paul. The New Testament tells of St Paul at Athens preaching against the worship of idols – statues of pagan gods like those here: “Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17, 22).

Giovanni Paolo Panini

Panini was a highly successful architect and stage-designer as well as painter, who worked in Rome during most of the 18th century. His fanciful capricci like this were popular with young English aristocrats making the Grand Tour - a sort of 18th century gap-year - and a number survive in great English houses like Castle Howard or the collection of the exiled Stuart royal family in Rome. Rome was an exciting place to visit, the home of a great civilization whose architecture and physical remains were beginning to be discovered in the 18th century through archaeology in places like Rome and Pompeii.