Interior of the Pantheon, Rome

Neoclassicism

Giovanni Paolo Panini

Interior of the Pantheon, Rome

about 1734

Oil on canvas, 50 1/2 × 39 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington

Rome's ancient domed interior as a busy public place: visitors and Romans cross the floor, and the open door shows the piazza and obelisk outside.

Look at

  • The dome fills the top half; the coffers shrink row by row toward the open oculus, so the eye climbs to the sky.
  • A slanting patch of sunlight from the oculus lands on the upper wall right of centre, cutting across the frieze.
  • Warm yellow columns and coloured marble panels below set off the cool grey of the dome above.
  • The NGA notes that Panini adjusted the perspective to show more of the interior than any single viewpoint allows.
  • Samuel H. Kress Collection; given to the nation's gallery in 1939.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · CC0

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