View of the Roman Forum

Panini's 1747 View of the Roman Forum at the Walters Art Museum presents the Forum Romanum from a viewpoint that was already well established in the veduta tradition, looking west along the Sacred Way with the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina visible to the left and the Arch of Titus in the distance. By 1747 the Forum had been partially cleared of the medieval accretions that had buried it, and visitors could begin to appreciate the spatial grandeur of what had been Rome's civic and religious centre. Panini's treatment combines topographic accuracy in the principal monuments with characteristic animation in the foreground figures — travellers, diggers, and Roman citizens sharing the space. The Walters Art Museum holds this painting alongside its companion View of the Colosseum of the same year, evidence that the two were conceived and have descended together as a pair.

Panini used a carefully calculated recession along the line of the Via Sacra, placing larger architectural incidents in the middle ground and allowing the distant arch to diminish convincingly through aerial perspective. The foreground surface is rendered with considerable textural complexity — earth, broken stone, vegetation — contrasting with the smooth carved surfaces of the surviving temples.