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Interior of the Pantheon, Rome
About the Artwork
Created as a temple under the Roman emperor Hadrian around the year AD 125, the Pantheon became a Christian church in 609. Significant restoration took place in the early 1700s, a period of renewed attention to early Christian monuments. The site was a major monument of antiquity, an active church, and its portico, visible through the door, held the most important art fair in the city. Panini shows the complexity of this public space by representing foreign tourists, local churchgoers, Roman nobles, and artists mingling under the dome.
Inscriptions
Signed lower left: "ROMAE / [I] P. PANINI. 1747."
Provenance
Tyrwhitt-Drake ("Shardeloes," Amersham, Buckinghamshire, UK) (sold, Christie’s, London, July 25, 1952, no. 148, to Reder) 1952 - Reder David Koetser (New York, New York) - 1969 Walter P. Chrysler 1969 - 1974 Eugene V. Thaw (New York, New York), sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1974. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 11-April 6, 1975). Collecting Drawings in England. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 3, 1987-January 17, 1988). The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006). Gallery One 2012. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 12, 2012-March 5, 2017).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Giovanni Paolo Panini (Italian, 1691–1765)
- Date
- 1747
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 147.5 x 120 x 5 cm (58 1/16 x 47 1/4 x 1 15/16 in.); Unframed: 127 x 97.8 cm (50 x 38 1/2 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1974.39
More by Giovanni Paolo Panini in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00000268
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