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Panini was the foremost Roman view painter of the 18^th century. Like Canaletto, his Venetian contemporary, he received his earliest training from a painter of theatrical scenery. The imaginary architectural perspectives of the Italian stage are not far removed from Panini's fashionable architectural fantasies. Such works combine the most famous monuments of antiquity without regard for the actual topography of Rome. This painting includes the Pantheon, the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, the Maison Carée at Nîmes, the sarcophagus of Constantine and the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.

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Giovanni Paolo Panini was a prolific painter of antiquarian capriccios, such as this imaginary view of Roman monuments. In this picture-and in its pendant, The Colosseum and Other Monuments, also at the IMA-he combined a selection of famous Roman buildings in an invented rural setting. Employing the scene painter's skills that he learned in Piacenza, Panini devised a composition reminiscent of a theatrical set. From left to right, the Temple of Hadrian, the Pantheon, the Temple of the Sybil at Tivoli, the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and the Theater of Marcellus encircle the Obelisk of Thutmose III, forming an imaginary piazza. At the front of this "stage," contemporary Roman peasants interact with antiquities under the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, placed by Michelangelo on the Capitoline Hill.

Remarkable is Panini's effort to restore archeological accuracy to some of these structures by removing later architectural alterations. He removed the bell towers added by Bernini to the Pantheon's pediment, as well as walled-in sections in the arches of the Theater of Marcellus. Both restorations were finally carried out many decades later.

To a man really curious in the polite arts, Rome alone must be an inexhaustible fund of entertainment. . . .
-Philip Francis, Hints to a Traveller, 1772