New paintings at Waddesdon Manor
The collections at Waddesdon have been enhanced by the recent acquisition of four major paintings, by Callet, Chardin and Panini, described here by Juliet Carey.
Juliet Carey, Monday, 25th August 2008
A Ball and A Concert by Giovanni Paolo Panini
Panini’s paired canvases depict a spectacular event in the theatre of state: the celebrations staged by the French ambassador to Rome, the duc de Nivernais, on the birth of a new heir to the French throne – Louis XV’s grandson, Louis-Joseph-Xavier, duc de Bourgogne (1751-61).2 The paintings (Figs 2 and 3) depict two highlights of a four-day fête that encompassed religious thanksgiving and extravagant partying.3 The celebration began with a mass and a sung Te Deum in S Luigi dei Francesci on the morning of Monday 22 November 1751. Panini designed a temporary decoration for the high altar. There was a procession and horse races in the Corso and refreshments at the French Academy in Palazzo Mancini. Decoration of the Corso and Piazza Farnese, and three nights of illuminations, stamped French jubilation on to the city streets. Buildings were lit up with lanterns and torches. Fountains of red and white wine flanked the main door of Palazzo Farnese, whose Gran Salone on the piano nobile was the setting for the concert and ball depicted by Panini.
Palazzo Farnese was owned by the King of the Two Sicilies (Carlo iii di Borbone, King of Naples and Sicily, 1735-59). He was brother-in-law of the Dauphine of France, Marie-Josèphe de Saxe, and so uncle by marriage of the new baby. His palace was used because access to the Nivernais palace was difficult. In the 17th century Agostino and Annibale Carracci had decorated many of the principal rooms in Palazzo Farnese, but they never fulfilled their plans to paint the Gran Salone, so during the 18th century this space was regularly transformed with ephemeral decorations for entertainments.
Panini designed the setting for the celebration, probably assisted by his son Giuseppe. The Waddesdon paintings closely match contemporary accounts of the décor, which included pilasters of light lapis lazuli inlaid with gold, the arms of France supported by winged and trumpeting figures, mirrors in gilded frames below painted scenes of putti holding lilies, a frieze with swags of roses held up by more putti – all topped with layers of elaborate arches and a ‘woven’ (tessuto) ceiling with festoons of naturalistically coloured roses. The paintings express the animating tension between the clear (if fictive) blue daylight in the ceiling, the illusory sunburst on the stage, the sheen of the gilding and painted panels and the flickering flames of the candles. Spectators remarked upon the brilliance of the lighting, inside and outside the palace: there were 39 glass chandeliers and, according to an eyewitness, 150 five-branched torches. Beyond his patron’s requirements, Panini must also have been motivated by a desire to record his own splendid embellishment of the palace.
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