The
Pantheon ( or , , from , meaning "Every god") is a
building in Rome
, built by
Emperor Trajan as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt in the early 2nd
century AD. A near-contemporary writer,
Cassius Dio, speculates that the name comes from
the statues of many gods placed around the building, or from the
resemblance of the dome to the heavens. The intended degree of
inclusiveness of the dedication to "all" the gods is debated.
Since the
French Revolution, when the church
of Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, was deconsecrated and turned into a
secular monument, the Panthéon
, the generic term pantheon may be applied
to any building in which illustrious dead are honoured or
buried.
The building is circular with a
portico of
three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first
rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into
the
rotunda, under a
coffered, concrete
dome, with a central opening
(
oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand
years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's
largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the
oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are
the same, . A rectangular structure links the portico with the
rotunda. It is one of the best preserved of all Roman buildings. It
has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the
7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a
Roman Catholic church dedicated to "St. Mary and the
Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria Rotonda."
History
Ancient
Model of the Pantheon
the aftermath of the
Battle of Actium
(31 BC),
Marcus
Agrippa built and dedicated the original Pantheon during his
third consulship (27 BC). The form of Agrippa's Pantheon is
debated. Augustus's Pantheon was destroyed along with other
buildings in a huge fire in 80 AD.
Domitian
rebuilt the Pantheon, which burned again in 110 AD. Not long after
this second fire, construction started again, according to a recent
re-evaluation of the bricks dated with manufacturer stamps.
Therefore, the design of the building should not be credited to
Hadrian or his architects. Instead, the
design of the extant building might belong to
Trajan's architect
Apollodorus of Damascus. The degree
to which the decorative scheme should be credited to Hadrian's
architects is uncertain. Finished by Hadrian but not claimed as one
of his works, it used the text of the original inscription
("
M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT", standing for
translated to "
Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, Consul for
the third time, built this") on the new facade, a common practice in Hadrian's rebuilding
projects all over Rome. How the building
was actually used is not known.
Cassius Dio, a Graeco-Roman senator,
consul and author of a comprehensive
History of Rome,
writing approximately 75 years after the Pantheon's reconstruction,
mistakenly attributed the domed building to Agrippa rather than
Hadrian. Dio and
Pliny the Elder
appear to be the only near contemporaneous writers to mention the
Pantheon. Even by the year 200 there was uncertainty about the
origin of the building and its purpose:
Agrippa finished the
construction of the building called the Pantheon. It has
this name, perhaps because it received among the images which
decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus;
but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted
roof, it resembles the heavens. (Cassius Dio History of
Rome 53.27.2)
The building was repaired by
Septimius
Severus and
Caracalla in 202 AD, for
which there is another, smaller inscription. This inscription reads
"pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultu restituerunt" ('with
every refinement they restored the Pantheon worn by age').
Medieval
In 609, the
Byzantine emperor
Phocas gave the building to
Pope Boniface IV, who converted it into a
Christian church and consecrated it to Sancta Maria ad Martyres,
now known as Santa Maria dei Martiri:
Another Pope, Boniface, asked the same [Emperor
Phocas, in Constantinople] to order that in the old temple called
the Pantheon, after the pagan filth was removed, a church should be
made, to the holy virgin Mary and all the martyrs, so that the
commemoration of the saints would take place henceforth where not
gods but demons were formerly worshiped.
The building's consecration as a church saved it from the
abandonment, destruction, and the worst of the spoliation which
befell the majority of ancient Rome's buildings during the early
medieval period.
Paul the Deacon records the spoliation of
the building by the Emperor
Constans II,
who visited Rome in July 663:
Remaining at Rome twelve days he pulled down
everything that in ancient times had been made of metal for the
ornament of the city, to such an extent that he even stripped off
the roof of the church [of the blessed Mary] which at one time was
called the Pantheon, and had been founded in honor of all the gods
and was now by the consent of the former rulers the place of all
the martyrs; and he took away from there the bronze tiles and sent
them with all the other ornaments to
Constantinople.
Much fine
external marble has been removed over the centuries, and there are
capitals from some of the pilasters in the
British
Museum
. Two columns were swallowed up in the
medieval buildings that abutted the Pantheon on the east and were
lost. In the early seventeenth century,
Urban VIII Barberini tore away the bronze
ceiling of the portico, and replaced the medieval campanile with
the famous twin towers built by
Maderno, which were not removed until the late
nineteenth century. The only other loss has been the external
sculptures, which adorned the
pediment
above Agrippa's inscription. The
marble
interior has largely survived, although with extensive
restoration.
Renaissance
Floor plan of the Pantheon from Georg
Dehio/Gustav von Bezold:
Kirchliche Baukunst des
Abendlandes.
Stuttgart: Verlag der Cotta'schen Buchhandlung
1887-1901.
Since the
Renaissance the Pantheon has been used as a tomb
.
Among those buried there are the
painter
Raphael and
Annibale Carracci, the composer
Arcangelo Corelli, and the
architect Baldassare
Peruzzi. In the 15th century, the Pantheon was adorned with
paintings: the best-known is the
Annunciation by
Melozzo da Forlì.
Architects, like
Brunelleschi, who used the Pantheon as
help when designing the Cathedral of Florence
's dome, looked to the Pantheon as inspiration for
their works.
Pope Urban VIII (1623 to 1644)
ordered the bronze ceiling of the Pantheon's portico melted down.
Most of
the bronze was used to make bombard
for the fortification of Castel Sant'Angelo
, with the remaining amount used by the Apostolic Camera for various other
works. It is also said that the bronze was used by
Bernini in creating his famous baldachin above the high
altar of St. Peter's Basilica
, but according to at least one expert, the Pope's
accounts state that about 90% of the bronze was used for the
cannon, and that the bronze for the baldachin came from Venice
.
This led
the Roman satirical figure Pasquino
to issue the famous proverb: Quod non fecerunt
barbari, fecerunt Barberini ("What the barbarians did not do,
the Barberinis [Urban VIII's family name]
did")
In 1747, the broad frieze below the dome with its false windows was
“restored,” but bore little resemblance to the original. In the
early decades of the twentieth century, a piece of the original, as
could be reconstructed from Renaissance drawings and paintings, was
recreated in one of the panels.
Modern
Tomb of Umberto I
Also
buried there are two kings of Italy
: Vittorio Emanuele II and
Umberto I, as well as Umberto's
Queen, Margherita. Although Italy has been a republic since
1946, volunteer members of Italian monarchist organisations
maintain a vigil over the royal tombs in the Pantheon. This has
aroused protests from time to time from republicans, but the
Catholic authorities allow the practice to continue, although the
Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage is in charge of the security
and maintenance.
The Pantheon is still used as a church.
Masses are celebrated there, particularly on
important Catholic days of obligation, and weddings.
Structure
Portico
The building was originally approached by a flight of steps. The
ground level in the surrounding area has risen considerably since
antiquity.
The pediment was decorated with relief sculpture, probably of
gilded bronze. Holes marking the location of clamps which held the
sculpture suggest that its design was likely an eagle within a
wreath; ribbons extended from the wreath into the corners of the
pediment.
The Pantheon’s porch was originally designed for monolithic granite
columns with shafts 50
Roman feet tall (weighing
about 100 tons) and capitals 10 Roman feet tall in the
Corinthian order. The taller porch would
have hidden the second pediment visible on the intermediate block.
Instead, the builders made many awkward adjustments in order to use
shafts 40 Roman feet tall and capitals 8 Roman feet tall.
The
substitution probably resulted from logistical difficulties at some
stage in the process: the grey granite columns actually used in the
Pantheon's pronaos were quarried at Mons Claudianus
in Egypt's eastern mountains. Each was tall,
five feet (1.5 m) in diameter, and 60 tons in weight. These were
dragged more than 100 km from the quarry to the river on
wooden sledges. They were floated by barge down the Nile when the
river was high and transferred to vessels to cross the
Mediterranean to the Roman port of Ostia where they were
transferred back onto barges and up the Tiber to Rome.
After being unloaded
near the Mausoleum
of Augustus
, the Pantheon was still about 700 meters
away.
In the walls at the back of the portico were niches, probably for
statues of
Caesar,
Augustus and
Agrippa, or for
the
Capitoline Triad, or another
set of gods.
The large bronze doors to the
cella, once
plated with
gold, are ancient but not original
to the Pantheon. The current doors—too small for the door
frame—have been there since at least the 15th century.
Rotunda
The weight of the
Roman concrete dome
is concentrated on a ring of
voussoirs in
diameter which form the oculus while the downward thrust of the
dome is carried by eight
barrel vaults
in the thick drum wall into eight piers. The thickness of the dome
varies from at the base of the dome to around the oculus. No
tensile test results are available on the concrete used in the
Pantheon; however Cowan discussed tests on ancient concrete from
Roman ruins in Libya which gave a compressive strength of 2.8 ksi
(20 MPa). An empirical relationship gives a tensile strength of for
this specimen. Finite element analysis of the structure by Mark and
Hutchison found a maximum tensile stress of only at the point where
the dome joins the raised outer wall. The stresses in the dome were
found to be substantially reduced by the use of successively less
dense aggregate stones in higher layers of the dome. Mark and
Hutchison estimated that if normal weight concrete had been used
throughout the stresses in the arch would have been some 80%
higher. The interior coffering was not only decorative, but also
reduced the weight of the roof, as did the elimination of the apex
by means of the oculus.
The top of the rotunda wall features a series of brick relieving
arches, visible on the outside and built into the mass of the
brickwork. The Pantheon is full of such devices — for example,
there are relieving arches over the recesses inside — but all
these arches were hidden by marble facing on the interior and
possibly by stone revetment or stucco on the exterior.
The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle
are the same, , so the whole interior would fit exactly within a
cube (alternatively, the interior could house a sphere in
diameter). These dimensions make more sense when expressed in
ancient Roman units
of measurement: the dome spans 150 Roman feet; the oculus is 30
Roman feet in diameter; the doorway was 40 Roman feet high. The
Pantheon holds the record for the largest unreinforced concrete
dome. It is also substantially larger than
earlier domes.
Though often drawn as a free-standing building, there was a
building at its rear into which it abutted. While this building
helped buttress the rotunda, there is no interior passage from one
to the other.
Interior
The interior of the dome was possibly intended to symbolize the
arched vault of the heavens. The oculus at the dome's apex and the
entry door are the only sources of light in the interior.
Throughout the day, the light from the oculus moves around this
space in a sort of reverse sundial effect. The oculus also serves
as a cooling and ventilation method. During storms, a drainage
system below the floor handles the rain that falls through the
oculus.
The dome features sunken panels (
coffers), in
five rows of twenty-eight. This evenly spaced layout was difficult
to achieve and almost certainly had symbolic meaning, either
numerical, geometric, or lunar. In antiquity, the coffers may have
contained bronze stars, rosettes, or other ornaments.
The interior of the Pantheon.
Circles and squares form the unifying theme of the interior design.
The checkerboard floor pattern contrasts with the concentric
circles of square coffers in the dome. Each zone of the interior,
from floor to ceiling, is subdivided according to a different
scheme. As a result, the interior decorative zones do not line up.
The overall effect is immediate viewer orientation according to the
major axis of the building, even though the cylindrical space
topped by a hemispherical dome is inherently ambiguous. This
discordance has not always been appreciated, and the attic level
was redone according to Neoclassical taste in the 18th
century.
360 Degree view of the interior of the
Pantheon.
Alterations as a Christian church
Tomb of Raphael
The present high altar and the apse were commissioned by
Pope Clement XI (1700-1721) and designed by
Alessandro Specchi. In the apse,
a copy of a Byzantine icon of the Madonna is enshrined. The
original, now in the Chapel of the Canons in the Vatican, has been
dated to the 13th century, although tradition claims that it is
much older. The choir was added in 1840, and was designed by
Luigi Poletti.
The first niche to the right of the entrance holds a
Madonna of
the Girdle and St Nicholas of Bari (1686) painted by an
unknown artist.The first chapel on the right, the Chapel of the
Annunciation, has a fresco of the
Annunication attributed
to
Melozzo da Forli. On the left
side is a canvas by Clement Maioli of
St Lawrence and St
Agnes (1645-1650). On the right wall is the
Incredulity of
St Thomas (1633) by
Pietro Paolo
Bonzi.
The second niche has a 15th century fresco of the Tuscan school,
depicting the
Coronation of the Virgin. In the second
chapel is the tomb of
King
Victor Emmanuel II (died 1878). It was originally dedicated to
the
Holy Spirit. A competition was held
to decide which architect should design it.
Giuseppe Sacconi participated, but
lost — he would later design the tomb of Umberto I in the
opposite chapel. Manfredio Manfredi won the competition, and
started work in 1885. The tomb consists of a large bronze plaque
surmounted by a Roman eagle and the arms of the
house of Savoy. The golden lamp above the
tomb burns in honor of
Victor
Emmanuel III, who died in exile in 1947.
The third niche has a sculpture by Il Lorenzone of
St Anne and
the Blessed Virgin. In the third chapel is a 15th-century
painting of the Umbrian school,
The Madonna of Mercy between St
Francis and St John the Baptist. It is also known as the
Madonna of the Railing, because it originally hung in the niche on
the left-hand side of the portico, where it was protected by a
railing. It was moved to the
Chapel of the Annunciation,
and then to its present position some time after 1837. The bronze
epigram commemorated
Pope Clement
XI's restoration of the sanctuary. On the right wall is the
canvas
Emperor Phocas presenting the Pantheon to Pope Boniface
IV (1750) by an unknown. There are three memorial plaques in
the floor, one conmmemorating a Gismonda written in the vernacular.
The final niche on the right side has a statue of
St.
Anastasio (1725) by
Bernardino
Cametti.
On the first niche to the left of the entrance is an
Assumption (1638) by
Andrea
Camassei. The first chapel on the left, is the Chapel of St
Joseph in the Holy Land, and is the chapel of the Confraternity of
the Virtuosi at the Pantheon. This refers to the confraternity of
artists and musicians that was formed here by a 16th-century Canon
of the church, Desiderio da Segni, to ensure that worship was
maintained in the chapel. The first members were, among others,
Antonio da Sangallo the
younger, Jacopo Meneghino, Giovanni Mangone,
Zuccari,
Domenico Beccafumi and
Flaminio Vacca. The confraternity continued
to draw members from the elite of Rome's artists and architects,
and among later members we find
Bernini,
Cortona,
Algardi and many others. The institution
still exists, and is now called the
Academia Ponteficia di
Belle Arti (The Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts), based in the
palace of the Cancelleria. The altar in the chapel is covered with
false marble. On the altar is a statue of
St Joseph and the
Holy Child by Vincenzo de Rossi. To the sides are paintings
(1661) by
Francesco Cozza, one of
the Virtuosi:
Adoration of the Shepherds on left side and
Adoration of the Magi on right. The stucco relief on the
left,
Dream of St Joseph is by Paolo Benaglia, and the one
on the right,
Rest during the flight from Egypt is by
Carlo Monaldi. On the vault are several 17th-century canvases, from
left to right:
Cumean Sibyl by
Ludovico Gimignani; Moses by
Francesco Rosa;
Eternal Father by
Giovanni Peruzzini;
David by
Luigi Garzi and
finally
Eritrean Sibyl by Giovanni Andrea Carlone.
The second niche has a statue of
St Agnes, by Vincenco
Felici. The bust on the left is a portrait of
Baldassare Peruzzi, derived from a
plaster portrait by
Giovanni
Duprè. The tomb of King Umberto I and his wife Margherita di
Savoia is in the next chapel. The chapel was originally dedicated
to St Michael the Archangel, and then to St. Thomas the Apostle.
The present design is by
Giuseppe
Sacconi, completed after his death by his pupil Guido Cirilli.
The tomb consists of a slab of alabaster mounted in gilded bronze.
The frieze has allegorical representations of
Generosity,
by Eugenio Maccagnani, and
Munificence, by
Arnaldo Zocchi. The royal tombs are
maintained by the National Institute of Honour Guards to the Royal
Tombs, founded in 1878. They also organize picket guards at the
tombs. The altar with the royal arms is by Cirilli.
The third niche holds the mortal remains — his Ossa et
cineres, "Bones and ashes", as the inscription on the sarcophagus
says — of the great artist
Raphael. His
fiancée, Maria Bibbiena is buried to the right of his sarcophagus;
she died before they could marry. The sarcophagus was given by
Pope Gregory XVI, and its
inscription reads ILLE HIC EST RAPHAEL TIMUIT QUO SOSPITE VINCI /
RERUM MAGNA PARENS ET MORIENTE MORI, meaning "Here lies Raphael, by
whom the mother of all things (Nature) feared to be overcome while
he was living, and while he was dying, herself to die". The
epigraph was written by
Pietro Bembo.
The present arrangement is from 1811, designed by Antonio Munoz.
The bust of Raphael (1833) is by Giuseppe Fabris. The two plaques
commemorate Maria Bibbiena and
Annibale Carracci. Behind the tomb is the
statue known as the
Madonna del Sasso (Madonna of the
Rock) so named because she rests one foot on a boulder. It was
commissioned by Raphael and made by
Lorenzetto in 1524.
In the Chapel of the Crucifixion, the Roman brick wall is visible
in the niches. The wooden crucifix on the altar is from the 15th
century. On the left wall is a
Descent of the Holy Ghost
(1790) by Pietro Labruzi. On the right side is the low relief
Cardinal Consalvi presents to Pope Pius VII the five provinces
restored to the Holy See (1824) made by the Danish sculptor
Bertel Thorvaldsen. The bust is a
portrait of Cardinal Agostino Rivarola. The final niche on this
side has a statue of
St. Rasius (
S.
Erasio) (1727) by Francesco Moderati.
Works modeled on, or inspired by, the Pantheon
The Rotunda designed by
Jefferson at the University of Virginia
As the best-preserved example of an
Ancient Roman monumental building, the
Pantheon has been enormously influential in
Western Architecture from at least the
Renaissance on; starting with
Brunelleschi's 42-meter dome of
Santa Maria
del Fiore
in
Florence
, completed in 1436– the first sizeable dome to be
constructed in
Western Europe since
Late Antiquity. The style of the
Pantheon can be detected in many buildings of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries; numerous
city hall,
universities and
public
libraries echo its portico-and-dome structure.
16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
- The bagno at Chiswick, by Lord Burlington (1717)
- St. Hedwig's Cathedral
(1747-1773) in Berlin
,
Germany
- Pantheon, Stourhead (1753-4)
- The
domed Marble Hall of Sanssouci
palace in Potsdam
, Germany
- The
Panthéon
in Paris (begun 1757)
- Anatomy Theater at the Ecole de Medecine in Paris by Gondouin
(1765-75)
- The
Temple in Dartrey
, (1770) by James
Wyatt
- Pantheon, London, by James Wyatt (1770-72)
19th Century
- US
Capitol
(1793-1826), Washington D.C.
, USA.
- The
Assumption Church, Puławy
, Poland
(1801 -
1803)
- Monticello
, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, by Thomas Jefferson (begun 1809)
- St. Alexander's Church
(1818-1825) in Warsaw
, Poland
- The
Rotunda
(1822-26), University of Virginia
, Charlottesville, Virginia
, USA, by Thomas
Jefferson
- The
Rotunda of Mosta, in Malta
, by Grognet
de Vasse (1833-60)
- The
British
Museum Reading Room
, by Smirke (1848-1856)
- The
State
Library of Victoria
(1854), and the Supreme Court Library of Victoria,
both in Melbourne
, Australia
- California State Capitol
in Sacramento
(1861)
- Low Memorial Library
(1895), Columbia
University, New York, New York
, USA
20th Century
- The
Temple Beth-El
, (1902), Detroit, Michigan
, USA
- The
Great
Dome, Killian Court (1916), Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
, Cambridge, Massachusetts
, USA
- The
"Grand Auditorium", Tsinghua University
, Beijing, China
(1917)
- Hendrick's Chapel, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
(1929)
- Manchester Central Library
(1930-34), Manchester
, UK
- The
Jefferson
Memorial
(1939-42), Washington, D.C.
, USA
- The
National
Gallery of Art
West Building by John Russell Pope, (1938-41),
Washington,
D.C., USA
- Church of Divine Wisdom, Rome, Italy, by M. Piacentini
(1948)
- Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Rome, Italy, by M.
Piacentini (1950-60)
- The
52-meter-tall Ottokár
Prohászka Memorial Church in Székesfehérvár
, Hungary
Notes
Footnotes
- Rarely Pantheum. This appears in Pliny's
Natural History (XXXVI.38) in describing this edifice:
Agrippae Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; in columnis
templi eius Caryatides
probantur inter pauca operum, sicut in fastigio posita signa, sed
propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.
- Quoted in
- The
Roman Pantheon: The Triumph of Concrete
- , pp. 179-182
- John the Deacon, Monumenta Germaniae Historia(1848)
7.8.20, quoted in
- Another view of the interior by Panini (1735),
Liechenstein Museum, Vienna
- ;
- , pp. 199-210
- , pp.199-206
- , pp. 206-212
- , pp. 206-207
- Moore, David, "The Pantheon",
http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/chapt01/chapt01.htm, 1999
- ,
- , pp. 182-184
- , pp. 182-183
- , pp. 184-197
See also
References
External links
, Rome, by Bernini
(1658-70)
by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger,
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