The Expulsion of the Money-changers from the Temple

Christ appears small in the middle of all that marble, arm raised with a whip of cords, while the merchants tumble down the temple steps in a mess of overturned tables, scattering coins, goats, sheep and a barking dog. The story comes from the Gospels: arriving at the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus found it turned into a marketplace and drove out the traders and money-changers. Panini stages it as pure commotion, with figures sprawling, clutching bundles and shielding children, and a woman in blue at the centre steps hurrying a toddler away from the chaos.

Giovanni Paolo Panini worked in Rome in the 1700s and made his name painting buildings rather than people. He began his career designing theatre sets, and it shows here: the temple is no ancient Jewish building but a grand Roman fantasy of Corinthian columns, coffered arches and a distant dome, arranged like a stage flat with the action pushed to the front. He returned to this subject more than once, and the pattern is always the same, a tiny sacred drama dwarfed by architecture. Whether that serves the story or upstages it is a fair question, though the huge carved urn on the right pedestal and the crumbling column bases are painted with real relish.