In 1749, Giovanni Pannini painted the Gallery of Cardinal Silvio Valenti-Gonzaga, a painting representing Silvio Valenti-Gonzaga inside a huge gallery whose walls are covered with reproductions of the paintings he owns.[5] This composition, featuring an imaginary architecture dedicated to the exhibition of an artistic collection, is the basis of the Gallery of Views.[6]
Between 1753 and 1757, Count Étienne François de Choiseul, Louis XV's ambassador to Rome in the 1740s, commissioned four paintings from Pannini: the Galleries of Views of Ancient Rome[7] and Modern Rome,[8] a view of the Place Saint-Peter and an Interior of St. Peter's Basilica.[9] These paintings were made between 1754 and 1757. In 1757, the Comte de Choiseul commissioned a second execution of these four paintings from him.
In 1758-1759, Pannini produced another version of the two Galleries on behalf of Claude-François de Montboissier de Canillac de Beaufort, abbot of Canillac and charge d'affaires at the French embassy in Rome. These versions are not identical to the previous ones: the paintings and sculptures are not depicted as hanging in the same places, some are missing between the two versions and the figures do not occupy the same positions.