The subject of our extremely rare tempera, of which no other exemple is known, could be identified thanks to an engraving by G. Ottaviani and N. Giansimoni depicting ‘Il Prospetto della Facciata del Palazzo d'abbitazione in Roma a Piazza Colonna delEmo Sig Card. Francesco De Solis Archbiv. Of Seville, illuminated on 10.11.12 August 1769'.

It was custom in vogue in 17th and 18th century Rome to decorate important palaces with posthumous facades on the occasion of some special event to be celebrated.

The palace that appears in Panini's tempera is covered with a wooden and cardboard façade, with a double order of pilasters on the ground floor and twin columns on the first floor on a terrace balustrade. A rich pediment embellished with statues adorns the attic.

In the lavishly decorated square with torches placed on high supports, a semi-circular stage is set up in front of the Antonine column for spectators who came, some on foot and some in carriages, to watch the fireworks display.

The palace in question is the Palazzo Piombino Boncompagni Ludovisi, which was located in Piazza Colonna.   The palace was commissioned by Cosimo Giustini in 1580 and was completed in 1588.  In 1609 it was purchased by Cardinal Fabrizio Veralli and in 1636 it passed by inheritance, together with the rich collection of marble and sculpture it contained, to Marquis Orazio Spada, whose family owned it until 1819 when it was purchased by Luigi I Boncompagni Ludovisi Prince of Piombino, who had already been renting it since 1797, hence the name of the building.

The palace was demolished in 1889 for the widening of the Corso. 

Cardinal Francisco de Solís (Salamanca,1713 - Rome,1775), to whom the engraving is dedicated, was a Spanish cardinal who resided in Rome in the Palazzo Piombino.

Of aristocratic origin, he belonged to one of the most influential families at the court of King Philip V.  In 1755 he was appointed archbishop of Seville and in 1756 Pope Benedict XIV made him a cardinal.

De Solis played an important role in the conclave of 1769 which was convened following the death of Pope Clement XIII and ended with the election of Pope Clement XIV.

The election of the new pope provided an opportunity to exert pressure from European states, particularly France and Spain, to abolish the Society of Jesus in the Catholic states.

The Sacred College, however, protested against the external interference it was suffering from the party in favour of the suppression of the Jesuits.

Cardinal De Solis supported by the ambassadors of France and Spain, however, insisted on committing the next pope with a written declaration containing the suppression of the Jesuits. He began to sound out Cardinal Ganganelli on his possibility of signing the promise required by the Bourbon kings as a precondition for his election.

Ganganelli eventually signed the document that satisfied De Solis and on 18 May 1769 therefore Ganganelli put everyone in agreement and was elected with forty-six out of forty-seven votes with the name Clement XIV.

It is therefore highly probable that the celebrations depicted here in front of Palazzo Piombino, the residence of Cardinal De Solis, were held both in honour of the cardinal and for the election of the new pontiff.

Our tempera by Francesco Panini is therefore a rare document depicting this 1769 event in Roman life.

Francesco Panini or Pannini Rome,1745–1812; (according to F.Arisi and L.Salerno 1738 – 1810 ), was an architecture and landscape painter, draughtsman and publisher of prints from the 18th and early 19th century living in Rome.

Francesco Panini was one of two sons of Giovanni Paolo Panini, a famed 18th-century Italian Veduta painter and architect in Rome.

His brother Giuseppe Panini (Rome, 1720–1812) was an architect and archaeologist who in 1762 completed the construction of the Trevi Fountain. The brothers worked together at different stages of their careers, as some of Francesco's drawings attest.

Francesco Panini collaborate with a number of well-regarded engravers in late 18th-century Rome: Carlo Antonini, Giovanni Ottaviani, Giuseppe Vasi, Giovanni Volpato.

Around 1770 he created a series of hand-colored views of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

He then worked with Giovanni Volpato, a highly talented engraver from Venice who published, between 1772 and 1776, a large series of plates after the frescoes of the Raphael Rooms and the Loggias at the Vatican, which gained him a considerable reputation. Some of these plates were subsequently hand-colored by Francesco Panini and they became much in demand among visitors to Rome. In a letter of 1775, the painter Gavin Hamilton to his English patron Lord Shelburne wrote that he had ordered a copy of the specimens of the Loggias colored by Panini. Francesco had intentionally overcome the ‘ruinistic’ taste of his father Giovanni Paolo in favor of a more accurate topographical precision in his views.

With the collaboration of Francesco Panini and Lodovico Teseo, Volpato published, between 1775 and 1777, a series of prints after frescoes painted by Annibale Carracci in the Galleria of Palazzo Farnese. Like his father, Francesco was also a man of culture: in 1772 he was accepted into the Accademia degli Arcadi.

His refined works are preserved at the Albertina in Vienna, at the Louvre in Paris, at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge2.

In 1974, twenty-two temperas on paper (440 x 680 mm) formerly owned by Countess Carolina Maraini of Florence were sold at auction in Rome.

In 2005 six other views of Roman Villas appeared on the market.