The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present

by Unknown

  Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon was the realization of a provision in the dying artist’s will. Although the will has not survived, a letter by an associate in the same year of his death, 1520, indicates that he left ample funds for the construction of a tomb, an altar, and their maintenance. In May of 1523, the Venetian ambassador Marino Sanudo wrote that the altar at the tomb “is being worked on as we speak, of serpentine, porphyry, and marble, and it will be very beautiful.” Giorgio Vasari recorded the program as follows: “He [Raphael] then ordered that they should restore one of the ancient tabernacles in Santa Maria Rotonda at his expense, using new stones, and that an altar be created with a statue of Our Lady in marble; this was erected after his death for his sepulchre and place of repose.” The statue of the Madonna and Child, executed by Raphael’s pupil and collaborator Lorenzetto, reflected the dedication of the church, and his treatment of the Madonna as an ancient matron referred to the heritage of the site.43

  As Nesselrath points out, there is good evidence of earlier burials in the Pantheon, for which medieval and early Renaissance tomb slabs are still preserved, having been removed from the floor during restorations. Nevertheless, Raphael’s tomb established a conspicuous precedent for Renaissance artists that was much emulated. After the burial of Raphael’s consort, Maria Bibiena, came that of Baldassare Peruzzi, according to Vasari, near Raphael’s tomb where “all the painters, sculptors, and architects of Rome” were interred. (The inscribed tablet honoring Peruzzi in the Pantheon today was placed there by his proud Sienese compatriots in 1921.) Under Paul III (1534–1549) in 1545, it became the prerogative of the Pantheon-based Confraternity of St. Joseph of the Holy Land, whose members were composed exclusively of artists, to grant the privilege of burial in the Pantheon. Thus, in the ensuing years it became the final resting place of Perino del Vaga (1547), Taddeo Zuccaro (1566), Giacomo Vignola (1573), and others. The importance of Raphael’s tomb is that it linked the notion of burial, traceable back to the Christianization of the monument, to the outstanding artists of Rome. Beyond that, Raphael may have given impetus to the restoration or renewal of the damaged and despoiled niches in the great piers of the rotunda.

  From the period of the Renaissance onward, architects and antiquarians left innumerable studies of the fabric in drawings and engravings. Representations from the Renaissance can be separated into two general groups: those images that attempted to record the monument as it stood and those that tried to “improve” or complete features of the building that were lost, damaged, or incomprehensible. In fact, the reception of the Pantheon down to the twenty-first century has paradoxically oscillated between praise of its merits and sympathetic analysis or criticism of features deemed unworthy of the original architect or architects, and therefore not authentic to its origins.44 Today, by contrast, we interpret the chronology of the building, apparent discontinuities in the fabric, and elements of design on the basis of evidence and understanding that were not available in the early modern period.

  Those who attempted to critique the composition and improve it in their drawings famously include Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1502) and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484–1546). Francesco di Giorgio left no detailed textual commentary pertaining to the drawing, in which he increased the height of the interior by inserting an additional attic register, modified the number and rhythm of the pilasters belonging to the existing attic, and rearranged the coffering of the dome (see Fig. 10.4). These alterations served one purpose: to bring vertical elements of the elevation in line with one another. Thus, Francesco imaginatively redeemed the monument from violating a crucial tenet of Renaissance composition in which solid-above-solid and void-above-void was the rule.

  Around 1535 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger addressed this issue (and several others) in drawings and written commentary (Fig. 1.15). He “corrected” the lack of vertical congruity between the columns and pilasters of the main order and the small pilasters of the attic, aligning them with the ribs of the dome to rectify “a most pernicious thing” about the original composition. In other drawings, he changed the position and number of columns in the porch because of a supposedly “erroneous” relationship to the niches and surrounded the temple with columns, producing, as Nesselrath puts it, something of a “caricature” of the original.

  1.15. Proposed refashioning of the Pantheon elevation; sixteenth-century drawing by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. (Uffizi A 874 recto)

  By contrast, Raphael’s drawings seem almost reverent in their fidelity, although they too present significant challenges of interpretation (Fig. 1.16). Why, for example, has one of the three exedras (or alcoves) been omitted in his rendering of the view embracing the entrance and altar bays? Perhaps, as Nesselrath proposes, Raphael was responding to impediments at the site, such as the medieval high altar that was refashioned in the 1490s. Nothing of the sort prevented Sebastiano Serlio from issuing his book with woodcuts showing the attic pilasters neatly aligned over the columns and pilasters below them, in evident contrast to the realities on site (Fig. 1.17, a and b). (He also represented the exterior facade without the second pediment over the roof of the portico, another conscious “improvement” of the building he wished to record for posterity.)45 By contrast, Andrea Palladio returned to Raphael’s paradigm in showing the elevation just as it stood (Fig. 1.18, a and b). Something about this layering of the composition must have suggested authenticity to him, an authenticity that escaped others of the period. Certainly Palladio showed no reticence in supplying the exterior with a network of channeled masonry and pilaster orders for which there was no evidence in the monument.46

  1.16. Interior view of Pantheon; sixteenth-century drawing by Raphael. (Uffizi A 164 recto)

  1.17 a and b. Section and detail of interior elevation; sixteenth-century woodcut engravings by Sebastiano Serlio. (Serlio 1584)

  1.18 a and b. Section and detail of interior elevation; sixteenth-century woodcut engravings by Andrea Palladio. (Palladio 1570)

  The lack of vertical congruity of interior components induced Michelangelo to suppose that the rotunda had been built up to the main cornice by one architect; another was responsible for the attic, its windows, and the dome; and a third ancient architect had added the portico.47 In all likelihood, he was not the first to reach this conclusion, and it certainly did not dull his enthusiasm forthe Pantheon. He judged the windows of the attic to be “most graceful,” the portico was a cosa rarissima (“a most rare thing”), and from the pavement to the cornicione a disegno angelico, e non umano (an “angelic, and not human design”), as we have already mentioned. In the Baroque era, Bernini concurred with these judgments but, stepping beyond his predecessors, also recognized how the pilasters of the attic story formed a contrapuntal or syncopated rhythm in diminished proportion to the vertical elements rising from the pavement.48 Thus, the wider and narrower bays that compose the cadence of the main order rising from the pavement were repeated on a smaller scale in the attic. In this reading, Bernini reenvisioned the integrity of the composition through the commensurability of its horizontal rhythms, in opposition to privileging the strict code of vertical alignment. (See Fig. 10.6 and Chapter Ten.)

  Today we can also appreciate how the elevation repeatedly severs vertical connections and encourages the perception of an attic floating over the main order and, in turn, the dome floating over the attic. At the same time, there are deliberate alignments that arise like major beats in a musical composition on the main axes and to a lesser degree on the diagonals. In fact, the checkerboard design of the floor, the main order with its exedras and piers, and the attic and coffered dome all participate in a kind of rhythmical swelling and contracting, pushing and pulling.49 The result is a more dynamic experience than the static formulas so often deployed in Renaissance and Neoclassical interpretations of the rotunda theme.

  The Pantheon in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

  Only partly inherited from the Renaissance, Bernini’s high regard for
the composition of the Pantheon had no doubt been sharpened by the widespread and hostile reaction to the removal of the ancient bronze trusses from the portico under Urban VIII in 1625. The impetus for this act of official vandalism was the need for metal to cast cannon for the protection of Castel Sant’Angelo, but the negative response was apparently so overwhelming that the pope subsequently claimed to need the materials for Bernini’s Baldacchino in St. Peter’s. In recent publications, Louise Rice has revisited and exposed this maneuver, which had given rise to the already cited pasquinade “What the barbarians didn’t do, the Barberini did.” The use of the bronze for a liturgical ensemble was evidently more acceptable than for cannon, although in truth, none of the metal was used at St. Peter’s. Instead, the metal from a number of cannon at Castel Sant’Angelo can be traced to the Pantheon bronze beams, the very antiquities that had so often been admired by draftsmen and antiquarians in the previous century.50

  In apparent compensation for this “barbarous” pillaging of the ancient monument, Urban VIII made reparations to its fabric. He replaced the missing column on the northeast corner of the portico and had the Barberini bee carved on its capital for all to see (Fig. 1.19). He replaced the bronze trusses with the structure of timber rafters, collars, purlins, struts, and braces apparently implemented by Francesco Borromini, whose working drawings are preserved in the Albertina Museum in Vienna. (see Fig. 10.1). The thirteenth-century bell tower had to be dismantled to remove the trusses, and to replace it Urban VIII commissioned a pair of twin towers on the flanks of the facade where they could be better supported than at the peak of the portico (Fig 1.20). The towers were designed under the auspices of the papal architect, Carlo Maderno, again with the aid of Borromini, as is also recorded in drawings now at the Albertina Museum (see Fig. 10.2).

  1.19. Northeast capital of portico with detail of Barberini bee and, on cornice, the later Chigi stars and mounts. (Photo William Rutledge)

  1.20. View of Piazza della Rotonda after removal of vendors, repair of the portico, and rebuilding of the Chapter house; engraving by G. B. Falda, ca. 1665. (Giovanni Battista Falda, Vedute delle fabriche, piazza, e strade fatte fare nuovomente in Rome dalla Santità di N.S. Alessandro VII, Rome 1665, unpaginated)

  These operations were published decades ago.51 Nevertheless, the bell towers are still often and incorrectly referred to in the literature as Bernini’s “asses’ ears,” even though Bernini had nothing to do with them or the operations leading up to their construction. When he later drew the Pantheon, Bernini never included the towers, which were finally taken down only in 1892 in the effort to restore the facade to its original, ancient aspect. Ironically, the towers are almost never correctly attributed to his rivals Maderno and Borromini.

  The next major campaigns on the Pantheon took place in the 1660s, during the reign of Alexander VII, a great builder and an enthusiastic antiquarian, who sought to restore the glories of the ancients to the modern city of Rome. It was he, for example, who hired Bernini to remodel Piazza San Pietro. Not surprisingly, Alexander also aspired to restore the original dimensions of Piazza della Rotonda in front of the Pantheon. Portions of the ancient platea had been discovered in Urban VIII’s time during excavations for the foundations of the church of Santa Maria Maddalena. Alexander knew this and aspired to purchase and demolish the city block between Piazza della Maddalena and Piazza della Rotonda, to grade the piazza to its ancient level, and to regularize its boundaries. In the event, however, financial and practical realities overtook these ambitions. Regularizing the Piazza della Rotonda proved to be as difficult as freeing the Pantheon of the buildings built against it. Even ridding the piazza of vendors proved exhausting and ultimately insurmountable.52 In the end, he did grade the piazza modestly, situated the vendors behind the fountain, and replaced the last two missing columns and the entablature (decorated with his Chigi family arms) on the east side of the portico. He had the old brick wall on the east side of the portico demolished and the columns freed of attached buildings. But he then had to rebuild the Chapter house of the canons of Santa Maria della Rotonda on the east flank of the rotunda well behind the newly restored columns (Fig. 1.20).

  Financial constraints and compromise with entrenched forces also limited Alexander’s work on the interior of the Pantheon. Three times he was said to have asked Bernini to decorate the venerable interior, and three times his favorite artist and confidante refused. Part of the work requested by the pope pertained to the attic; other parts involved decorations for the coffers of the dome. Drawings from circa 1662 to 1667 indicate that the pope wanted to decorate the coffers with his family emblems (six mounts, six-pointed stars, entwined laurel; see Fig.10.8). Some of the stuccoes were installed, as we know from reports of their removal under the following pontificate, while some bits apparently survived until Pannini’s day (see Chapter Eleven). Other proposals, like the inscription dedicated to the pope that was to be installed around the oculus in a field of stars, remained unexecuted (see Fig. 10.8).53 A degree of egomania seems to have inflected these projects, but fortunately, tradition prevailed and little of consequence was done to the Pantheon for the balance of the century.

  At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Clement XI (1700–1721) sponsored a redesign of the whole altar area. The new altar, the work of Alessandro Specchi (1668–1729) was probably inspired by a report of 1714 on the history of the only two saints known by name – Anastasius and Rasius – from among the 28 martyrs reportedly brought to the Pantheon in the seventh century. (During routine repairs in anticipation of the Holy Year 1675, their remains had been discovered behind an iron grating at the back of the altar.) Thus, in 1715, a scheme was developed to refashion the high altar, which included a large tabernacle that may have utilized the older porphyry columns on site. On the altar mensa, Specchi planned a sculpture of the Madonna and Child, which would have obscured a view of the medieval miracle-working Madonna image, the Renaissance maiolica Assumption relief, and older frescoes on the walls of the apse. In any event, the scheme was significantly changed and finally unveiled in 1725, during the pontificate of Benedict XIII (1724–1730).54

  This work obliterated the frescoes of Saints Anastasius and Rasius (date uncertain) located on the right wall of the tribune. Henceforth, the saints were commemorated in the pier niches flanking the apse with over-life-sized statues by the artists Bernardino Cametti (1669–1736) and Francesco Moderati (ca. 1680–1729). Contracts for these marble figures in 1725 and 1727 tell us that St. Rasius by Moderati was located to the left of the high altar and St. Anastasius by Cametti to the right, where they are seen today (Fig. 1.10). On the other hand, Specchi’s high altar was completely dismantled and rebuilt in 1934 during the Fascist era. At that time, nearly all vestiges of the medieval, Renaissance, and eighteenth-century elaborations of the altar and the apse disappeared. The gilded coffering pattern in the apse and the Albani emblems (three mounts and stars) on the projecting entablatures flanking it are the only notable remains of Specchi’s work.55

  For the Pantheon, Specchi also produced an unexecuted project circa 1710 to remodel the Chapel of St. Joseph of the Holy Land (San Giuseppe di Terra Santa), which is the second chapel at the left on entering (see Fig 11.4). The confraternity of St. Joseph of the Holy Land was established in 1542 by a canon of Santa Maria ad martyres named Desiderio di Adiutorio (1481–1546) and approved the following year.56 Membership in the confraternity soon became exclusive to artists of the day and came to be called “I Virtuosi al Pantheon.” Desiderio had been to the Holy Land twice and wanted to exhibit his collection of relics at the Pantheon, ultimately hoping to be buried there too, following Raphael’s precedent. In 1545, the confraternity was granted the right to extend permission for burial there to deserving members of the group.57 Before this time, there was no consistent tradition for burial in the Pantheon apart from its consecration to all of the martyrs of early Christianity and the few tomb slabs we have mentioned in passing.

  In 1713, the privi
lege of visual artists to burial at the Pantheon was expanded to include the composer Angelo Corelli. This event corresponded to the decision to locate commemorative niches and busts around the entire circumference of the building, as Pannini’s paintings show (Plate II). Many of the niches remained empty throughout much of the eighteenth century. Then, around 1780, an effort was made to provide busts for Nicholas Poussin, Anton Raphael Mengs, and J. J. Winckelmann, thus an older artist and two who were recently deceased. In turn, these inspired the sculptor Antonio Canova (1757–1822) to propose the installation of a new series of commemorative busts of the “illustrious and most important men in Italy.” The first of them were Dante, Tasso, Michelangelo, Palladio, Correggio, Titian, and Veronese; others followed, all commissioned by Canova at his expense from fellow sculptors. At the time, 1809, Canova occupied essential offices for Pope Pius VII (1800–1823), and then, after the Napoleonic invasion of Italy and occupation of Rome in later 1809, for the French. In fact, the French prefect of Rome, Camille de Tournon, encouraged Canova’s idea, perhaps inspired by Ste-Geneviève in Paris. Canova had been to Paris in 1802, less than a decade after the church had become the Panthéon and turned into a national mausoleum.58 Thus, the Roman Pantheon inspired a French Panthéon, which in turn affected thoughts about the use of the original building.

  After 1814, the expulsion of the French from Rome, and the reestablishment of papal governance, a number of observers, including the reigning pope, Pius VII, realized that Santa Maria ad martyres was now celebrating heroes of a secular world.59 Susanna Pasquali describes how, in a midnight raid in 1820, all of the busts in the Pantheon were removed to a new collection at the Vatican Museums, with papal officials eventually reinstating only those monuments directly relevant to church history. By 1833, doubts even arose about the true location of Raphael’s remains, giving occasion for a dramatic exhumation by candlelight.60 It revealed that Raphael was indeed buried at the site, a notion that still reverberates among today’s visitors.