Perspective of ancient thermal baths

Joli painted imaginary Roman ruins for a living, and he came to it honestly. He had trained with Panini in Rome, the great painter of ancient ruins, and he spent years designing stage sets for Venetian opera houses, where a painted hall had to open convincingly into painted depth. This 1756 view of vast antique baths is that skill turned into a picture, crumbling vaults and columns arranged so the eye travels back through them as if down a stage. Nothing here records a real building. It is a fantasy of antiquity, made when educated Europeans were falling in love again with the Roman past. Joli had just settled back in Venice, where he became one of the 36 founding members of the new academy of fine arts.