Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Giovanni Paolo Pannini was an Italian painter and architect born in 1692 in Piacenza, Italy. He trained as a stage designer but later moved to Rome in 1711 to study drawing and decoration. Pannini began receiving recognition around 1716 for his paintings of cityscapes and views of Rome, both real and imaginary. He specialized in painting buildings and ruins and was the first artist to devote his work to studying ruins. In the 1720s, Pannini also taught perspective at the Accademia di San Luca and the Academic de France in Rome.