PAOLO, a painter of perspective and architecture. He was born at Placentia in 1691, with a most happy genius to painting, which he cultivated by studying at Rome, where he designed every vestige of ancient magnificence, the ruins of superb Roman edifices, cenotaphs, columns, baths, arches, and obelisks, as also some of the most entire buildings, the ornaments of modern Rome.

He studied the works of Ghilolfi with peculiar pleasure; he formed his taste, style, and manner, by the compositions of that esteemed artist; and his strongest ambition was to imitate him; so that he soon became eminent in that style beyond all his contemporaries. His composition is rich; the truth of his perspective is critically exact; and his paintings are universally esteemed for the grandeur of the architecture, for the clearness of his colouring, for the beautiful figures which he generally introduced, and also for the elegant taste with which he disposed them. He always designed them correctly, and set them off with suitable attitudes and expression.

However, this description of his merit must be supposed to allude to his early and prime performances; for in his latter time, his pictures were distinguishable by a free and broad touch, but they are feeble in their colouring and effect. At all times, indeed, he was too apt to design his figures rather too large for the architecture, which diminished the grandeur of the most magnificent parts of his composition, and was quite contrary to the practice of Ghilolfi; whose works must perpetually afford a pleasing deception to the eye, by the perspective proportions observed between the figures, buildings, and distances.

At Rivoli, a pleasure house belonging to the king of Sardinia, there are several of Panini's paintings, which are views of that fine retreat and its environs. They are beautifully coloured, well handled, and with a touch full full of spirit; though in some parts the yellow seems a little too predominant, and the lights are not always distributed in such a manner as to produce the most striking effect.