The present paintings are studio copies after Panini's originals in Rome, Galleria dell'Accademia di S. Luca (see F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini, Rome 1986, fig. 179-182).

Of the antiquities included in the Capriccio with an Apostle Preaching, the figure standing to the right, carrying a child, is the Borghese Faun, also called Silenus with the young Bacchus, that is now in the Louvre but, in Panini's day, was in the Villa Borghese in a room named after it (see F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven 1981, pp. 247-250, cat. no. 53, reproduced., p. 307, cat. no. 77, reproduced p. 306). The Borghese Faun was discovered near the present Casino Massimo sometime before 1569 as it is mentioned, in that year, in a letter from Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici thanking Carlo Muti, the then owner, for allowing him to have it moulded. The ruins in the foreground with the inscription ...STITUER... on the entablature are those of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus in the Forum Romanum. Of the former, the frieze depicting a triumphal scene is probably a free rendering on one of two bas-reliefs on the inside walls of the Arch of Titus; the vase on the left is the Borghese Vase, from the 1st centur🌜y A.D. and now in the Louvre, but di🐲scovered in 1566 in the gardens of Sallust, Rome.

Another pa🀅ir of the same compositions, likewise rectangular and given to Panini's studio, sold May 18, 2006, lot 201, for $120,000.