The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present

by Unknown

  12.1. Capriccio of ancient and papal Romes, by Philippe and Felix Benoist, with the Pantheon at center. (Champagny, Rome dans sa grandeur, 1870, frontispiece)

  Veneration of ancient Rome was a compelling force throughout the period of unification. It served what one observer called “the sacred flame that alone across many centuries kept the feeling of Italian nationality alive.”2 After 1876, Sinistra leaders exploited this cult of antiquity to fashion a powerful state image. Whereas other nations could only allude to the trappings of the imperial Roman style in architecture, Italians had the inestimable advantage of being able to take possession of genuine antiquities. For the burgeoning secular and scientific culture of nineteenth-century Europe, the monuments of ancient Rome bore the sanctity of Christian relics and the venerable attributes of power. Infused with such potent associations, these monuments became the focus of impassioned disputes among the state, municipal, and religious authorities for matters of custodial responsibility. Michele Coppino, the minister of public instruction in the late 1870s, illustrated the broadly held belief among his national government colleagues when he noted to city officials that “the majesty of [ancient] monuments is always a testimony of the glory of the secular world. [Rome] belongs to the entire nation, which demands of His Majesty’s government the strictest guardianship of monuments that are for the fatherland the most glorious heritage.”3 The primacy of Roman antiquities as secular symbols divorced from their ecclesiastical importance reflected a change of perspective that would stir intense controversy over the Pantheon.

  Italian leaders faced a unique problem in their new capital – the continued presence of a rival head of state in Pope Pius IX, whose assertions of sovereignty challenged Italian claims to the possession of Rome. Both the Destra and the Sinistra recognized that Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy’s first king,4 could alone offset the prestige commanded by the pope. Although the Risorgimento had produced other heroes, only the king represented both an appealing political position and an image of permanence: Mazzini, the earliest leader of the Risorgimento, and General Garibaldi were both republicans – a political orientation deemed too radical by most Italian leaders; and Cavour, Italy’s first prime minister, occupied an office already synonymous with transience in Italy.5 Prior to 1876, Destra leaders had demanded that Vittorio Emanuele be present in the capital to secure Italian control of the city, but without displays of patriotism that might jeapordize a peace settlement with the Vatican. They wanted the physical presence of a “citizen king and not some Roman conqueror.”6 Despite Italian government efforts to downplay its victory, Pius IX excommunicated Vittorio Emanuele from the Roman Catholic faith in response to the entry of the Italian army into Rome. The Sinistra, by contrast, would exploit and mythologize the royal office as its most powerful propaganda weapon against the papacy. The unexpected death of Vittorio Emanuele II on January 9, 1878, presented the Sinistra government with its first prominent opportunity to become involved in the transformation of Rome and, in the process, create a vivid state image – one that was nationalistic, grandiose, and, above all, secular. Immediate calls for a national monument to the king in the capital ensured government intervention in the city’s urban affairs, progressively extending to archaeology, street planning, new public buildings, other civic monuments, and the king’s tomb in the Pantheon.

  As with all urban projects in Rome sponsored by the anticlerical government, the theme of permanence – reflecting the political aspiration to possess Rome – played a major role in the definition of the king’s posthumous image. The concern of Sinistra leaders for permanence dictated that greater emphasis be given to the royal office than to Vittorio Emanuele as an individual. This distinction reflected a long tradition that Ernst Kantorowicz labeled “the King’s Two Bodies.”7 According to this tenet, rooted in medieval political theology, the person and the office of the king were separate entities, the former mortal, the latter immortal. For Sinistra leaders, the Majesty of God was secularized into the Majesty of Statehood, but otherwise they conformed to the pattern and its emphasis on outward imagery for the masses. When the Royal House of Savoy organized the lying-in-state of the monarch’s corpse in the Sala degli Svizzeri in the Quirinal Palace, they set Vittorio Emanuele in an upright position, signifying the survival and continuity of the royal office beyond the death of the individual king. Ultimately, the enormous Victor Emanuel Monument on the Capitoline Hill celebrated the “immortal” and secular body of the royal office, while the Pantheon remained a sepulcher for the mortal, physical body of Vittorio Emanuele.

  Francesco Lattari, the author of a book on Savoy monuments in Rome published in May 1879, provided a detailed explanation of the difference between the two types of monuments and their relative significance. His discussion offers the most explicit contemporary confirmation of an awareness and exploitation of the two-bodies tradition. In a revealing passage, he summarizes how

  civil monuments erected to illustrious men are tributes of gratitude and of admiration to their moral persons, they are works intended to celebrate, in a manner independent of their corporeal relics, the accomplishments and glories acquired in the social arena. Sepulchral monuments are attestations of affection and respect to the remains of dear persons, and although some of them might have had or can have simultaneously the same purpose of civil monuments, only for really great men in the advancement of civilization is it deemed to be a more splendid and significant thing to separate the homages to the remains from those to the historic personages. The first monuments are homages to the noble works accomplished by illustrious men, to the ideas that they represent.... The second, by contrast, being homages to the mortal remains of the esteemed, are circumscribed by the just mentioned connections and by religious considerations, which since most ancient times, and especially since the institution of Christianity, are associated with sepulchres.8

  Lattari’s observations about the inherently Christian character of sepulchers help account for the slowness with which anticlerical Sinistra leaders would address the issue of the permanent royal tomb. Meanwhile, the news of the king’s death stirred a public debate over the location of his tomb. For patriotic reasons, politicians and popular sentiment agreed that Vittorio Emanuele should remain in Rome, rather than be returned to his native city of Turin, the traditional seat of the House of Savoy, for burial in the Superga, the family mausoleum. The new king, Umberto I, agreed on the condition that his father be buried in a place of Catholic worship.9 This ruled out proposals by some antiquarian enthusiasts to locate the royal sepulcher on the Palatine Hill or the Capitoline Hill.10 While the Vatican did not oppose the king’s burial in a church in Rome, it did prohibit consideration of a location in any of the patriarchal basilicas, namely, the great churches founded by Constantine.11 Responsibility for selecting a site for the king’s tomb fell to Interior Minister Francesco Crispi, one of the more radical anticlerical members of the Sinistra government. He conformed to the restrictions set out by both King Umberto and the pope, yet satisfied his own government’s interest in using the symbolic values of antiquity by choosing the Pantheon as the king’s resting place.12

  Part of the appeal of this site stemmed, no doubt, from the term “pantheon” itself, which had by the nineteenth century acquired the secular and nationalistic connotation of a place where a country celebrates and immortalizes its martyrs and great citizens.13 This tradition goes back to the Christianization of the Pantheon and its rededication to the unnamed martyrs entombed there. Throughout the Renaissance, this tradition embraced famous artists and came to be extended to rulers, as in the royal crypt of the Escorial in Spain, and heroes, as was the case with the church of Ste. Geneviève in Paris, which was renamed Le Panthéon, deconsecrated, and converted in the 1790s into a shrine to the French Revolution. Although some shrines to national heroes go by other names, such as the Walhalla (built 1830–1842) in Germany by the architect Leo von Klenze, “pantheon” was the term most widely employed in the nineteenth century. In
the United States, the final but unexecuted design for the Washington Monument of 1845 by Robert Mills included a rotunda 250 feet in diameter at its base that he called the “Pantheon,” where niches inside would house statues of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War heroes.14 The pedimented portico attached to the western side of the ring of 30 Doric columns (one for each state in the union at the time) made the connection to the Roman Pantheon even stronger. During the Risorgimento, Italians likewise embraced the patriotic pantheon concept, as in the proposal of 1862 for a “Historic-Political-Artistic Italian National Pantheon” for Turin, and a “Pantheon of Illustrious Men,” a fireworks machine for celebrating Italy’s constitution day festival in Rome in 1872.15

  Interior Minister Crispi intended more than mere patriotic commemoration when he selected the Pantheon as the site of the royal tomb. Crispi hoped to augment the legitimacy and permanence of the nascent royal office. As he later declared to parliament, “the throne [of Italy], like the state, must be firm and appear as such, [since] the stability of institutions is revealed to the people by the stability of [their] monuments.”16 Better than any other site in the city, the Pantheon allowed him to align the Italian royal house with the emperors of ancient Rome, particularly the Julian emperors, for whom the Pantheon served as a dynastic sanctuary.17 In addition to a venerable foundation under Augustus by his first consul, Agrippa, the building possessed the round shape of an imperial mausoleum, like the tombs of Augustus and Hadrian nearby. One contemporary observer recognized the equation, noting that the Roman Pantheon, “which Agrippa magnificently erected in homage to all the gods, we Italians today regard as sacred to another immortal: to our liberator.”18

  The “official funeral” for Vittorio Emanuele, probably organized by the royal house, occurred on January 17, 1878, and was ostensibly a religious service involving the solemn entombment of the king within a provisional resting place inside the Pantheon.19 The interior decoration of the Pantheon employed a large catafalque, adorned by no fewer than 12 candelabras supporting a myriad of candles and guarded by statues of eight imperial lions (Fig. 12.2). Overhead, long strips of velvet, draped from the oculus and secured at the base of dome, formed an enormous canopy. The king’s body was placed atop the catafalque, before being entombed within a provisional “royal chapel” to the right of the high altar – a site chosen by the Reverend Valerio Anzino, the king’s chaplain, on orders from Crispi.20 All of the major European nations had representatives in attendance. Italy’s allies sent the most guests of note, including Maria Pia, the queen of Portugal; Prince Ranieri, the archduke of Austria; Prince Wilhelm of Baden; and Friedrich Wilhelm, the imperial prince of Germany.21

  12.2. View of the official funeral of Vittorio Emanuele II in the Pantheon showing the catafalque and temporary decorations, January 17, 1878; engraving by Dante Paolocci. (L’Illustrazione Italiana, February 3, 1878, p. 68)

  The solemnity and grandeur of the ceremonies and the international participation impressed the Romans, who had previously viewed with suspicion the function of Rome as a national capital.22 The funeral profoundly affected the popular view of the royal family and the king. The newspaper L’Illustrazione Italiana reported that the widespread sympathy and patriotism “for the monarchy in our country was practically a revelation. Not only the upper classes, but the middle and lowest classes were moved with such spontaneity and vivacity, from one end of the peninsula to the other, that the ... event became a political event, showing the solidity of the unity of the Italian monarchy. The patriotism won over the republicans and the clericals, save a few and isolated exceptions.”23 This “revelation” reflected the sudden and impressive augmentation of Vittorio Emanuele’s reputation in death. For the first time, the king became unquestionably the most potent symbol of Italian unity.

  The state exequies, the government’s official homage to the deceased monarch, occurred a month later on February 16, 1878, and gave further visual expression to this secular royal cult.24 Michele Coppino, the minister of public instruction, appointed a committee, composed mainly of professors from the Instituto di Belle Arti in Rome, led by architect Luigi Rosso, to design the elaborate decorative program.25 Within a month, Rosso’s team had adorned the Pantheon with antique regalia that reinforced the burgeoning emblematic power of the king and his office (Fig. 12.3). Their work effectively “restored” the temple to its presumed ancient state, resembling contemporary reconstructions of the building’s original appearance. The decorative program fully exploited the symbolic associations of the Pantheon with fame and immortality, as well as its connection to ancient emperors. The tympanum scene, painted by Domenico Bruschi in tempera in imitation of gilt bronze relief, depicted the apotheosis of the royal House of Savoy.26 It included a winged “angel of the resurrection” sitting atop an “adorned sarcophagus”; below it appeared a crown, scepter, and mantle symbolizing kingship, while to either side personifications of prominent Italian cities pressed toward the center with votive offerings.27 Above the pediment stood a Roman imperial eagle flanked, at the ends, by allegories of Fame. The two niches of the porch accommodated large, smoking tripods – an ancient symbol of the fusing of divine and heroic.28 Dynastic imagery continued in the porch, where oval shields of eight counts, dukes, and kings of the House of Savoy adorned the columns. Covering the faint traces of the Agrippan dedication, the temporary new frieze inscription equated Italy’s first king with the first emperor of Rome: “Padre della Patria” was a direct translation of “Pater Patriae,” the epithet of Augustus.29

  12.3. Exterior of the Pantheon decorated by Luigi Rosso et al. for the state exequies of Vittorio Emanuele II, February 16, 1878. (Negro 1956, p. 149, Plate 166)

  The equally fantastic interior decorations continued the imperial iconography and further disguised the ecclesiastical purpose of the building (Fig. 12.4). An enormous catafalque occupied the center, with reposing lions anchoring its corners and Savoy eagles on each side representing the king’s imperial power. Allegories of his personal attributes flanked the draped cenotaph, which was topped by Savoy crests alternating with Victor Emanuel’s monogram. Covering the oculus overhead, the enormous “Star of Italy” took its place at the center of 140 gas-lit stars that filled the coffers of the dome.30 The state exequies provided the first elaborate manifestation of the aggrandizement of the royal office, initiating the highly propagandistic symbolism of the state in the king’s image that culminated with the more prominent Victor Emanuel Monument on the Capitoline. The abundant use of the star motif in the coffers and around the oculus recalled a grandiose scheme for similar personal imagery, under Alexander VII in the 1660s, recorded in drawings for the Pantheon.31

  12.4. Interior of the Pantheon decorated by Luigi Rosso et al. for the state exequies of Vittorio Emanuele II, February 16, 1878; engraving by Dante Paolocci. (L’Illustrazione Italiana, March 3, 1878, p. 148)

  The presence of the king’s tomb transformed the public identity of the Pantheon and gave greater prominence to the issue of who controlled the city’s heritage. Having served for more than 1,200 years as a Christian church, it quickly became a national shrine with political associations. While the arrival of the king’s remains decisively resolved the long-standing dispute between the Ministry of Public Instruction and the city, with the mayor of Rome ceding to the state responsibility for any restoration work at the temple,32 a volatile discussion over custody ensued between the Italian government and the Vatican. The Ministry of Public Instruction controlled antiquities as part of the national heritage; however, churches were exempt from state secularization laws. Such architectural hybrids, having both ancient and ecclesiastical importance, presented a special problem of jurisdiction. The entombment of the king in the Pantheon gave Italian leaders an opportunity to seize at least partial control of its interior.

  The canons of the church of S. Maria ad martyres resented the imposition on their space caused by the presence of the temporary royal tomb to the right of
the high altar. Carmine Gori, the archpriest of their chapter, reminded Giuseppe Fiorelli, the general director of antiquities in the Ministry of Public Instruction, that Benedict XIV’s bull of February 18, 1757, had given the Prefecture of the SS. Palazzi Apostolici custody of the whole Pantheon, without distinguishing between interior and exterior jurisdiction; and he added that his chapter did not recognize any other authority or law.33 Gori also complained vociferously about the many wreaths deposited around the king’s temporary tomb, charging that they “disfigure the appearance of the building and of a place considered sacred by the faithful.”34 He requested the removal of the wreaths and of the veterans’ guards protecting the tomb because of their propensity to occupy what he called the Sancta Sanctorum, presumably the altar area, even during masses. Fiorelli responded that the papal bulls had been nullified by the termination of papal temporal power, and he ordered the Pantheon chapter to desist.35