Antique Ruins with Apostles Preaching

Artist Giovanni Paolo Panini (Italian, 1691 - 1765)

Date1744

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 19 1/2 × 26 3/8 inches (49.53 × 66.98 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number32-9

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionAmid the ruins of ancient classical buildings, two bearded men (Apostles) stand together on a stone slab near the center of the composition. The gray-haired Apostle, in profile, gestures with his right hand while preaching to a small audience comprising men, women and children who randomly stand, sit or kneel on surrounding stone blocks. The remains of an archway appear in the left middle ground, through which a distant view of two mountain peaks can be seen. The primary architectural ruin at right is a classical temple with Ionic columns. At the extreme edges of the composition are broken pilasters, sections of stone reliefs, and fragments of capitals and cornices. The background sky is light blue with grayish white clouds.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Exhibition of Italian Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, January 26-February 23, 1958, no. 14.

The Ruins of Rome, University of Pennsylvania University Museum, Philadelphia, December 15, 1960-February 15, 1961; The Detroit Institute of Arts, March 22-May 7, 1961, no. 58.

Remnants of Things Past, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL, January 8-February 7, 1971; Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, FL, February 16-March 14, 1971, no. 23.

Gallery Label

The cult of ruins became an obsession with visitors to Rome and Italy from the 16th century onwards, since it encouraged cultural tourists to meditate on the decline of great civilizations like the Roman Empire. This was thought to offer a morally beneficial warning on the vanity of earthly glory. In this example, the addition of Christian subject matter would also have generated reflections on the rise of Christianity and the fall of Roman paganism. The Roman ruins here are imaginary, but Panini also painted accurate topographical views of Rome like that of the Piazza del Popolo.

Provenance

Major Dermot H. B. McCalmont (b. 1887), Cheveley Park, Newmarket, Cambridgeshire, by November 26, 1920;

Purchased at his sale, Sporting Pictures and Works by Old Masters, Christie’s, London, November 26, 1920, lot 135, by Ashton;

London art market, by 1932;

With Newhouse Galleries, New York, by 1932;

Purchased from Newhouse by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932.

Published References

“Like Helmeted Minerva, Springs Kansas City’s New Art Museum,” The Art Digest 8 (December 1, 1933): 26, 28, (repro.).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 22, (repro.).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2^nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 169.

“Exhibition of Italian Art,” Birmingham Museum of Art Bulletin 6, no. 3 (1958): 6, 12.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 262.

Robert C. Smith and Froelich Rainey, The Ruins of Rome, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Art Museum, 1960), unpaginated, (repro.).

Robert C. Smith, “Ruins in Rome,” Expedition 3, no. 2 (1961): 23, (repro.).

Ferdinando Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini (Piacenza: Cassa di Risparmio, 1961), no. 170, pp. 36-37, 100, 109, 175, 176, 253, (repro.).

Estella Brunetti, “Il Panini e la monografia di F. Arisi,” Arte Antica e Moderna, no. 26 (April-June 1964): 171, 179-80.

Margaret Koscielny Parker, Remnants of Things Past, exh. cat. (St. Petersburg, Florida: Museum of Fine Arts, 1971), unpaginated.

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 541 [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 73].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 156, 465, 589.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 260.

Svetlana Vsevolozhskaya, 15^th to 18^th Century Italian Painting from the Hermitage Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981), 300, (repro.).

L’opera ritrovata: Omaggio a Rodolfo Siviero, exh. cat. (Florence: Cantini, 1984), 203, (repro.).

Ferdinando Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del’ 700 (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 1986), no. 339, pp. 145, 211, 230, 310, 395, 401, 403, (repro.).

Da Leonardo a Tiepolo: Collezioni italiane dell’Ermitage di Leningrado, exh. cat. (Milan: Electa, 1990), 98.

Ferdinando Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini (Soncino: Edizioni dei Soncino, 1991), 16, 36.

Flaminia Cosmelli, ed., Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623-1683): Un pittore milanese di rovine romane (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 1992), 106.

Ferdinando Arisi, Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1691-1765, exh. cat. (Milan: Electa, 1993), 12, 13, 16, 26n25, (repro.).

Elliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 417-20, (repro.).

David R. Marshall, “Early Panini Reconsidered: The Esztergom Preaching of An Apostle and the Relationship between Panini and Ghisolfi,” Artibus et historiae 18, no. 36 (1997): 146, (repro.).

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