The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present

by Unknown

  In aesthetic matters, the Pantheon has often been a magnet for contemporary opinion. When inadequately anchored bits of the dome began falling in 1753, a massive and controversial “restoration” was undertaken. This episode – again fully documented by Pasquali and thus not datable to 1747 as often claimed – is one of the richest testaments to the reception of the building.61 The consolidation effort was directed by Antonio Baldani, a papal official, noted scholar, and proponent of neoclassical aesthetics. Included in his charge was the repair of the attic, where much of the placage had become dangerously detached and in need of refurbishing. Rather than doing so, however, he had the attic stripped of the marble pilasters and other decorations that had inspired so much Renaissance debate. In spite of Bernini’s admiration, Baldani was convinced that the composition of the attic must have been due to alterations imposed on the ancient building after its Christian consecration. We have already encountered the reason: the attic register simply did not follow the received view of classical rules of design dictating the placement of solid above solid and void above void.

  Although informed scholars opposed him – Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, for example, maintained that the building had been rededicated to Christianity “without moving a stone” – Baldani hired the young architect Paolo Posi (1708–1776) to replace the composition. The original pilastrini disappeared forever. The new scheme remains in the building for all visitors to see: a remarkably dull combination of rectangular fields and pedimented window frames (see Plate VIII). There is, of course, no antique precedent for Posi’s composition, and critics were quick to react. In 1756, the polymath, essayist, critic, and collector Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764) described how “they have dared to ruin that magnificently august fabric of the Pantheon, which alone among the works of antiquity remained complete.” Writing from Venice in 1777, the artist and critic Antonio Visentini (1688–1782) called it a disaster that should never have occurred. The historian Francesco Milizia (1725–1798), noted for his bias against the baroque, was a little charitable at first, characterizing Posi’s “talento grande, senza buona architettura” but later accused him of “the new fashion of thumbing one’s nose at antiquity.”62

  The Pantheon from the Nineteenth Century to Our Day

  If Baldani and Posi had anticipated future praise for their resolution of a historic feature of the Pantheon, they were sadly mistaken. In 1807, Carlo Fea termed the remodeling of the attic “an unpardonable barbarism” and called Posi “nefarious, reckless, and arrogant.” Giovanni Eroli, writing in 1895, termed the scheme “bestial.” From the Fascist period, Alberto Terenzio’s judgment may seem comparatively mild, merely calling the work “deplorable.” It was during Benito Mussolini’s rule that Terenzio was commissioned to return the Pantheon as much as possible to its ancient state, and for this purpose in 1929–1934 he restored a small section of the attic to the right (west) of the main exedra with the pilastrini that Posi had obliterated (see Plate VII).63 Because it is such a small portion of the attic circumference, it looks somewhat lost – a gesture too tentative to allow the eye easily to sense the virtues of the original.

  VII. Portion of attic register of Pantheon interior that was restored to original design by Alberto Terenzio in the 1930s. (The Bern Digital Pantheon Project)

  VIII. Attic register of Pantheon interior as renovated beginning in 1753 by Paolo Posi. (The Bern Digital Pantheon Project)

  Nearly every administration in charge of the Pantheon over the centuries sought to liberate the structure from the accretion of buildings around it and to limit the activity of vendors. Alexander VII’s success in confining the market stalls behind the fountain must have encouraged Clement XI to embellish the Fontana del Pantheon in 1710–1711. By adding an ancient obelisk on a rocky base in the center, Filippo Barigioni (1690–1753) gave emphasis to Giacomo della Porta’s preexisting basin and spouts of circa 1575 (Fig. 1.1). The inspiration was surely Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers on nearby Piazza Navona, which sits in front of Sant’Agnese, a centralized, two-towered church like the Pantheon. Barigioni’s additions succeeded in pulling the fountain into a much more forceful relationship with the Pantheon, even if the axes are not precisely aligned (see Figs. 10.10 and 10.12).64

  The presence of the vendors, merchants, and markets on the piazza persisted into the early nineteenth century when, under the Napoleonic regime of Prefect Camille De Tournon, the problem was once again addressed. Between 1809 and 1813, orders were issued “in the name of Napoleon” to remove the new accretion of stalls and booths “which detract the admiration of visitors from a part of the most beautiful monument of antiquity.”65 The famous neoclassical architects Raffaele Stern (1774–1820) and Giuseppe Valadier (1762–1839) were commissioned to identify, evaluate, and demolish houses attached to the flanks of the Pantheon and to fix the space in front of it as a “piazza rettangolare.” The fishmongers were to be transferred to a new location near Sant’Eustachio. In 1813, it was proposed to tear down the Pantheon’s bell towers, but this did not happen. A plan approved by De Tournon’s commission also projected the extension of Piazza della Rotonda to Piazza Maddalena, almost exactly as had Alexander VII (Fig. 1.21).66 This plan, was published in the atlas of De Tournon’s schemes for revitalizing the historic centers of Rome.67 In a different political climate after Napoleon’s demise, Popes Pius VII (1800–1823) and Pius IX (1948–1978) took up identical campaigns, again without success.68

  1.21. Scheme for enlarging Piazza della Rotonda during the Napoleonic occupation of Rome under Camille De Tournon. (De Tournon 1855, Plate 30)

  Since the unification of Italy and the designation of Rome as its capital in 1860–1861, the Pantheon had been the target of many restorations and ephemeral embellishments. In the first Master Plan of Rome in 1873, the complete liberation of the building from all structures attached to it was foreseen, as was the extension of Piazza della Rotonda. The second Master Plan of Rome of 1883 dropped the idea of extending the piazza but maintained the desire, eventually fulfilled, to expose all of the ancient parts of the south side of the monument. Ironically, as Allan Ceen has argued, such isolation was not desired by the ancient architects, nor in all probability anticipated. This vision was, rather, an invention of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, which was nurtured to fruition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.69

  The twin campanili built on the facade by Maderno and Borromini were removed in 1882–1883 (Figs. 1.22 and 1.23). The context for this demolition was highly politicized and not merely an attempt to return the prospect of the Pantheon to its ancient state. Because the towers had assumed the role of marking a church, their removal signaled a return to its pre-Christian origins, a change not welcomed by the Vatican (see Chapter Twelve). It was indeed a baldly anticlerical gesture. This was followed by a host of other restorations of a less conspicuous nature, which took place with such frequency in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that a complete list defies our limits of space and patience. Yet each is important in identifying what is and is not truly ancient in the fabric today. For example, the pavement of the rotunda was restored in 1872 and many times thereafter, right up to the 1990s as mentioned earlier. Large areas of brick pavement in the portico were replaced in white marble and granite in the period 1883–1885. In 1911, Antonio Muñoz restructured Raphael’s tomb and altar.70

  1.22. Facade of Pantheon before 1882–1883; period photograph. (Photo archive, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

  1.23. Facade of Pantheon after removal of bell towers in 1882–1883; period photograph. (Photo archive, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

  By the early 1890s, both Dressel and Chédanne had come to realize that bricks from the Pantheon bore evidence of Hadrian’s reign. An excavation directed by Luca Beltrami, assisted by the young Pier Olinto Armanini in the years 1892–1893, added fuel to the debate. Robin Williams’s chapter explains how, in a bit of unfortunate timing, Chédanne’s drawings were exhibited in
Rome in 1895, just months after the new minister of public education, Guido Baccelli, had restored the Agrippan inscription on the facade at great expense. Baccelli responded furiously, “Yet I have placed in bronze letters on the frieze of the Pantheon AGRIPPA FECIT; until I shall be with Minerva, vivaddio! Hadrian has nothing to do with it!”71 This reaction deserves to be recalled as we evaluate Hetland’s redating of bricks to the Trajanic period in Chapter Three.

  The death in 1878 of the first king of a united Italy, Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, inspired a project drawn up by Pietro Comparini (1833–1882) for a huge “Foro Vittorio Emmanuele” in 1881 (Fig. 1.24). Under the direction of Baccelli, Comparini’s project would have restored the piazza to the dimensions anticipated in the earlier projects of Alexander VII and the Napoleonic regime, in the service of yet another politicized vision of antiquity.72 Yet again, this was not to be. Instead, the definitive design for the well-known monument to Victor Emmanuel was selected for the more conspicuous site on Piazza Venezia in 1882 (see Fig. 12.8 and Plate XXIV). In 1884, Victor Emmanuel’s son and successor Umberto I ordered the king’s tomb located in the lateral niche on the west side of the Rotunda’s interior. Upon Umberto’s death in 1900, his own tomb was arranged in the eastern niche of the Pantheon in the years 1904–1911. Under the Lateran Accords of 1929, the Pantheon became the Palatine basilica of the Savoy family, a reprise of dynastic intentions that can be traced back to the days of Augustus and Agrippa.

  1.24. Scheme by Pietro Comparini for enlarging Piazza della Rotonda to commemorate King Victor Emmanuel II, 1882. (Racheli 2000, p. 356)

  We have already referred to the Fascist era restorations between 1929 and 1934 under the aegis of the Sopraintendenza ai monumenti di Lazio and directed by Alberto Terenzio. At this time, much of the exterior brickwork was repaired and repointed, its surfaces hammered to distinguish their texture from the ancient masonry. In the same campaign, the revetments of the interior were consolidated, and the high altar was replaced by a spare modernist counterpart, which must have seemed more appropriate to the imagined severity of the ancient building. In 1928, the niches and altars in the Rotunda were reconstructed to eliminate most vestiges of baroque decoration. For a time, Mussolini or his advisors must have hoped to capitalize on the imperial associations of the Pantheon for their own purposes, as the House of Savoy had done. Armando Brasini (1879–1965) designed a “Foro Mussolini,” borrowing heavily from the earlier schemes with which we are familiar. His vision included a forecourt graded to the ancient level and extended around and behind the Pantheon as a vast sunken piazza, which was to be surrounded by famous ancient statues brought to the site from Rome’s museums (Fig. 1.25, a and b).73

  1.25. a) Plan for a Foro Mussolini uniting Piazza Colonna and Piazza della Rotonda by Armando Brasini, 1927; and b) bird’s-eye view. (Racheli 2000, p. 357)

  The problem of integrating the “living Rome” with monumental Rome has long been an issue of debate. In response, the architect and historian Gustavo Giovannoni (1873–1943) advocated the preservation of ancient sites within the context of the evolving urban tissue. In the end, his views prevailed, not perhaps out of universal acceptance but due also to Mussolini’s ambivalence toward the power of monumental art and urbanism to support his regime.74 The Pantheon survived, significantly restored, and another chapter in the history of its “preservation” ended with relatively minimal damage.

  In a concluding chapter to this volume, Richard Etlin discusses the various associative values that the Pantheon has embodied in the modern era. As an architectural form to be emulated and almost endlessly quoted, it could serve as a symbol of Christianity, divinity, or religion itself. It could inspire the monumentalization of nature, knowledge, education, rulership, democracy, fame, or patriotism. For some, the Pantheon encapsulates the notion of eternity, for others truth, and others still a perfection that is at once formal and spiritual. Frank Lloyd Wright called his Guggenheim Museum “my Pantheon.” For Louis Kahn, the “Pantheon is really a world within a world.”

  Such ideas represent a beginning, not an end, of broader studies of the fabric that arose sometime in the second century AD. Today we may take comfort from a greater degree of legislative protection and oversight for Rome’s architectural heritage and the jewel in its crown that is the Pantheon. The structure of the portico was consolidated in 1954; from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, the roof tiles were reset and drainage improved; other works of maintenance and cleaning were pursued almost uninterruptedly from the latter half of the 1970s into the 1980s. Some of the most impressive preservation efforts took place beginning in 1992, under the direction of Mario Lolli Ghetti: cleaning, repairing or replacing, and repatinating much of the marble encrustation of the interior.75 After more than two centuries when just the one leaf of the great bronze doors could be opened, and incompletely at that, we can now enjoy the full generosity of both leaves functioning anew, thanks to conservation works carried out in 1998.76

  Just as maintenance and conservation continue and will continue, so does research. Aided by countless photographs available on the Internet and laser-scanned surveys of the building, such as those produced by the Karman Center of the University of Bern, new information offers new insights on matters of construction and issues of stability. On the other hand, there is still no extensive published survey of the building that would guide our appreciation for what is original, added, or restored in the fabric. Who knows, for example, what mysteries lie concealed beneath the smooth interior surfaces of the coffered dome as restored in 2004–2005? The situation epitomizes, literally and figuratively, the deeper fascination of the Pantheon. The building is no simple archaeological artifact awaiting forensic dissection but a living monument. Unknowns and apparent contradictions will continue to puzzle, enchant, and defy definition or full comprehension. Our goal in this volume has been to gather new research on the Pantheon, and to present it interwoven into a fabric of considerations, past, present, and future. Inevitably, there is more still to be learned, but as we do so, the lure of the monument and its layered history can only continue to grow.

  1 The main scholarly monograph on the Pantheon is Kjeld De Fine Licht’s The Rotunda in Rom: A Study of Hadrian’s Pantheon, Copenhagen 1968, recently joined by Gene Waddell, Creating the Pantheon: Design, Materials, and Construction, Rome 2008. For a brief but excellent introduction, see William L. MacDonald, The Pantheon: Design, Meaning, and Progeny, London 1976 (repr. 1981, 2002). See also Roberto Vighi, The Pantheon, Rome 1964, and F. Lucchini, Pantheon, Rome 1996.

  2 On the progeny of the Pantheon, see MacDonald 1976, a topic which also recurs in the chapters in the second half of the present volume.

  3 Francesco Paolo Fiore and Arnold Nesselrath, La Roma di Leon Battista Alberti: umanisti, architetti e artisti alla scoperta dell’antico nella città del Quattrocento, Milan, 2005, p. 191.

  4 Allan Ceen, “The Urban Setting of the Pantheon,” in Gerd Grasshoff, Michael Heinzelmann, and Markus Wäfler, eds., The Pantheon in Rome: Contributions to the Conference, Bern, November 9–12, 2006, Bern 2009, pp. 127–138.

  5 Scriptores Historiae Augustae (S.H.A.), Hadrian, 19.10. For this and other ancient sources see Licht 1968, pp. 180–184, and for recent defense of the Pantheon as a temple see Fabio Barry, “The Pediment of the Pantheon. Problems and Possibilities,” in Scritti in onore di Lucos Cozza, ed. Robert Coates-Stephens and Lavinia Cozza, London and Rome 2014, pp. 89–105, esp. 95–98.

  6 Paul Godfrey and David Hemsoll, “The Pantheon: Temple or Rotunda?” in Pagan Gods and Shrines of the Roman Empire, ed. Martin Henig et. al., Oxford 1986, pp. 195–209. However, the Asklepieion at Pergamon, a religious structure, does repeat the basic form of the Pantheon.

  7 Eugenio La Rocca, s.v. “Pantheon (fase pre-Adriana),” in E. M. Steinby, ed., Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, Rome 1995–1999; vol. 5, 1999, pp. 280–283.

  8 For this connection, see Edmund Thomas, “From the Pantheon of the Gods to the Pantheon of Rome,” in Richa
rd Wrigley and Matthew Cracke, eds., Pantheons: Transformations of a Monumental Idea, Aldershot, 2004, pp. 11–33. However, Thomas was of the opinion that the Tychaion stood in Antioch in Syria, whereas Alexandria is identified as the site by La Rocca in his chapter here, as confirmed by Judith. S. McKenzie and Andres T. Reyes, “The Alexandrian Tychaion, a Pantheon?” Journal of Roman Archaeology 26, 2013, pp. 36–52.

  9 Filippo Coarelli, Il Campo Marzio: dalle origini alla fine della repubblica, Rome, 1997, pp. 17–59.

  10 William C. Loerke, “Georges Chedanne and the Pantheon: A Beaux Arts Contribution to the History of Roman Architecture,” Modulus 1982, pp. 40–55

  11 Heinrich Dressel, Inscriptiones urbis Romae latinae, Berlin 1891; Herbert Bloch, I bolli laterizi e la storia edilizia romana. Contributi all’archeologia e alla storia romana (1936–1938), Rome 1947. For further background, see Chapter Three in this volume.

  12 Paola Virgili and Paola Battistelli, “Indagini in piazza della Rotonda e sulla fronte del Pantheon,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 100, 1999, pp. 137–154.