Live Auction 7887Old Masters & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolours (Evening Sale)
Giovanni Paolo Panini (Piacenza 1691-1765 Rome)
Lot 32 The Property of a Private European Collector (lots 12, 32 & 33)

Giovanni Paolo Panini (Piacenza 1691-1765 Rome)

An architectural capriccio with Christ at the Pool of Bethesda

Closed7 December 2010

Price Realised

GBP 253,250

Considering selling a similar item?

Discover its value with a complimentary estimate from our specialists.

More Information

How to sell

Giovanni Paolo Panini (Piacenza 1691-1765 Rome)
An architectural capriccio with Christ at the Pool of Bethesda
oil on canvas
38 7/8 x 53½ in. (98.7 x 135.9 cm.)

Anonymous sale; Lepke, Berlin, 12 October 1908, lot 27, as signed.
Collection Fürstenberg, château de Beaumesnil, from whom confiscated by the ERR at Beaumesnil, and acquired by The German Reich, for the planned Führermuseum, Linz, on 8 February 1941 (inv. 1497).
Transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point by Western Allied Forces (Mü. 4970) and restituted to France on 27 March 1946.
with Chaucer Fine Arts, London, 1983, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Specialist note

Ferdinando Arisi dated the present work to 1720-24, considering it the earliest of Panini's various treatments of this subject and 'un lavoro di grande impegno'. Other versions of the subject include the large upright canvas dated 1737, painted as part of a series for Philip V of Spain (Segovia, San Ildefonso; Arisi, loc. cit., no. 243), and a composition that is fairly closely related to this one, which has been dated circa 1727 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek; Arisi, loc. cit., no. 172).
We are grateful to Professor David Marshall for confirming the attribution of this painting, declaring it 'one of the best of this phase of his [Panini's] career'.