Copy after Giovanni Paolo Panini
The story
Giovanni Paolo Panini painted the same ruins again and again. A temple portico from the Roman Forum, a triumphal arch or a famous ancient statue would appear in one canvas and return in another, rearranged, with a different crowd of small figures in front. These capriccios, imaginary views built from real monuments, sold steadily through his long career in Rome, and other painters copied them.
Copy after Giovanni Paolo Panini is the label a museum gives to one of those copies. The design belongs to Panini and the brushwork to another hand, usually one nobody can name, and the label makes no claim that Panini touched the canvas. It is narrower than follower of Panini, which describes a painter working in his manner, because a copy repeats one particular picture, which can often still be found and set beside it.
A copy of this kind seldom carries a date, and without a document the canvas alone rarely shows whether it was painted in Panini's lifetime or long after his death in 1765.
