The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present

by Unknown

  22 Boullée 1968, pp. 87–88 (fol. 92v).

  23 Boullée 1968, p. 82 (fol. 89).

  24 Donald Drew Egbert, The Beaux-Arts Tradition in French Architecture, Illustrated by the “Grand Prix de Rome,” ed. David Van Zanten, Princeton 1980, p. 5.

  25 The description of Gay’s project can be found in a series of annotated tracings of the Grand Prix designs at the Cabinet des Dessins, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. According to Werner Szambien, these early nineteenth-century tracings were probably by Antoine-Marie Peyre (Werner Szambien “Notes sur le Receuil d’Architecture privée de Boullée (1792–1796),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 94, no. 1346, 1981, pp. 111–124; p. 115). For illustrations and a more complete account, see Etlin 1984, pp. 139–146.

  26 For illustrations of the funerary projects discussed in this section, see Etlin 1984.

  27 Louis I. Kahn, “Talks with Students,” Rice University, 1964, in Alessandra Latour, ed., Louis I. Kahn: Writings, Lectures, Interviews, New York 1991, p. 168.

  28 Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, “Louis I. Kahn: National Capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh,” Global Architecture 72, 1994, pp. 1–47; p. 47.

  29 Louis I. Kahn, “New Frontiers in Architecture,” CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) in Otterlo, Netherlands, 1959, in Latour 1991, p. 84.

  30 See also, Kahn, “Space and Inspirations,” lecture for the symposium “The Conservatory Redefined” at the New England Conservatory, November 14, 1976, in Latour 1991, p. 227: “All buildings, therefore, do not belong to Architecture. The Pantheon is an example of what is made in the domain Architecture and not in the domain Market Place. It expresses uninfluenced directions toward the making of its space as an institution of man, as it would direct the making of a place of learning, a place of government, a place of the home, places of well-being, giving them each the space environment aspiring to their dedications.” For a further consideration of this theme, in its relationship to the architecture of Boullée, Cret, and Kahn, see Richard A. Etlin, Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and Its Legacy, Chicago 1994, pp. 13–24 (“The Space of Clarity”) and 48–87 (Chapter 3, “Character and Design Method”).

  31 Louis I. Kahn, “A Statement by Louis I. Kahn,” Arts + Architecture 81, no. 5, 1964, pp. 18–19 and 33; p. 33. This passage, which accurately transcribes the typescript (Box 59, The Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania), is nonetheless awkward in its wording and also appears to be missing a word, which I have inserted in brackets. Unfortunately, the transcription in Latour 1991, p. 151, taken from the published article, confuses matters further by introducing a typographical error: “There is a demand from saying nothing specific, no direction ...” (Louis I. Kahn, “A Statement” (a paper delivered at the International Design Conference, Aspen, Colorado, 1962), in Latour 1991, pp. 145–152; p. 151). In his anthology of Kahn’s writings, Robert Twombly gives a “lightly corrected and amended” (p. 151) text: “And there is a demand that form say nothing specific, no direction ...” (Louis I. Kahn, “Lecture at International Design Conference, Aspen, Colorado, [1962],” in Louis I. Kahn, Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, ed. Robert Twombly, New York 2003, pp. 151–161; p. 160). I am grateful to Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto for verifying the archival transcript.

  32 Louis Kahn, “Twelve Lines,” in Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu, University of St. Thomas, Houston, October 19, 1967–January 3, 1968, exh. cat., Houston 1968, p. 9.

  33 Boullée 1968, p. 91 (fols. 94–94v).

  34 For illustrations of the domes designed successively by Benjamin Latrobe, Charles Bulfinch, and Thomas U. Walter, see Mary Louchheim Lieberthal, Designing a Nation’s Capitol: Controversy and Compromise, New Orleans Museum of Art, September 18–October 24, exh. cat., New Orleans 1976.

  35 Pamela Scott, “Charles Bulfinch: Well-Connected, Refined Gentleman Architect,” in Donald R. Kennon, ed., The United States Capitol: Designing and Decorating a National Icon, Athens, Ohio, 2000, p. 60.

  36 James Leith, Space and Revolution: Projects for Monuments, Squares, and Public Buildings in France, 1789–1799, Montreal 1991, pp. 78–117 (Chapter 4, “Temples for the Nation and Its Heroes”).

  37 Braham 1980, p. 141; Ian Robertson, ed., Paris and Environs, The Blue Guides, London 1977, pp. 70 and 77.

  38 Talbot Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, New York 1955, p. 288 and Plate 29.

  39 Boullée 1968, p. 138 (editor’s n. 116); Helen Rosenau, Social Purpose in Architecture: Paris and London Compared, 1760–1800, London 1970, pp. 126–127 with illustrations; MacDonald 2002, p. 124.

  40 Rosenau 1970, pp. 116–117 with illustration: “Un globe, en tous les tems, n’est égal qu’à lui-même;/ C’est de l’égalité le plus parfait embleme.”

  41 In Boullée 1968, p. 138 n. 116, Pérouse de Montclos dates the Temple to the Earth to 1790 and the Temple to Equality to 1794. In Space and Revolution, p. 179, Leith maintains that the architect’s note on the rear side of the drawing of the Temple to the Earth affirms that he had exhibited it in 1794.

  42 Leith 1991, pp. 178–180 and Figs. 198–202.

  43 Leith 1991, pp. 166–181, especially Fig. 191 (Crozier, Project for a Temple to Equality).

  44 Susanna Pasquali, Chapter Eleven in this volume. See also her earlier essay, “From the Pantheon of Artists to the Pantheon of Illustrious Men: Raphael’s Tomb and Its Legacy,” in Richard Wrigley and Matthew Craske, eds., Pantheon: Transformation of a Monumental Idea, Aldershot 2004, pp. 35–56.

  45 Etlin 1994a, pp. 24–29 (“The Space of Emulation”). For a more extensive treatment of this theme, see Judith Colton, The Parnasse François: Titon du Tillet and the Origins of the Monument to Genius, New Haven 1979.

  46 Etlin 1984, pp. 101–109, 282–290 (illustrations).

  47 As quoted in Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types, The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 1970, Bollingen Series 35.19, Princeton 1976, p. 126.

  48 Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris, New York 1994, pp. 2–4.

  49 MacDonald 2002, p. 125; Pevsner 1976, pp. 107–108.

  50 McClellan 1994, pp. 51–52.

  51 McClellan 1994, pp. 13 and 49.

  52 Pevsner 1976, p. 118 (Fig. 8.14); Egbert 1980, p. 172. The gallery with Pantheon-like dome would reappear in the second prize of the Grand Prix of 1791, as well as in the actual Museo Pio-Clementino (ca. 1773–1780), built in the Vatican complex of buildings by Michelangelo Simonetti and then Giuseppe Camporesi, where the sculpture display “culminat[ed] in the [Pantheon-like coffered] Rotunda as the room for the major deities” (Pevsner 1976, pp. 116–117 [Fig. 8.11]).

  53 Henry Lemonnier, ed., Procès-verbaux de l’Académie royale d’Architecture 1671–1793, Paris 1924, vol. 8, p. 377 (May 3, 1779); Van-Cléemputte and Prieur 1787–1796, cahier 1, Plate 1.

  54 Pérouse de Montclos 1984, pp. 162–166 with illustrations; Egbert 1980, p. 175.

  55 Pevsner 1976, p. 122 (Fig. 8.26).

  56 McClellan 1994, p. 58.

  57 On the eighteenth-century idea of placing the busts of the great men of France in public buildings, see Etlin 1994a, pp. 25–26.

  58 I am referring to Boullée’s project for a public library on the site of the Capucines Monastery, where the blank front facade is broken in the middle by a broad line of columns spaced two deep and constituting the front face of an entrance porch further defined by a double row of columns to the rear, which, in turn, constitute the front of a sanctuary-like semicircular entrance court. For an illustration, see Pevsner 1976, p. 103 (Fig. 7.29).

  59 Here I differ with Pevsner, who, in A History of Building Types, argues that both the front colonnaded porch and the central rotunda of Schinkel’s Altes Museum were “clearly inspired by Durand” (p. 127). Neither Durand’s single row of entrance columns nor his modestly sized central rotunda compare with Schinkel’s grander development of both features, which follow upon the example set by Boullée and Pe
rcier.

  60 “The only objections [to Schinkel’s memorandum of January 8, 1823, to the king] came from Hirt, who criticised Schinkel’s basic ideas for the building, especially the rotunda and colonnaded front, on the grounds of their lack of utility.” (Gottfried Riemann, “View of the Interior of the Rotunda of the Altes Museum,” cat. entry 56 in Michael Snodin, ed., Karl Friedrich Schinkel: A Universal Man, New Haven 1991, pp. 130–132; p. 131.

  61 Pevsner 1976, p. 127.

  62 Karl Friedrich Schinkel, “Comment on the Report of Hofrat Hirt of February 5, 1823,” as quoted in Riemann’s entry 56 in Snodin 1991, p. 132 (punctuation and spelling modified).

  63 Riemann in Snodin 1991, p. 132.

  64 Riemann in Snodin 1991, p. 132.

  65 On Friedrich Gilly’s visit to Paris and his relationship with Schinkel, see Watkin and Mellinghoff 1987, pp. 69–72, 85–86.

  66 Leo von Klenze, as quoted in Ein griechischer Traum: Leo von Klenze. Der Archäologe, Glyptothek, December 6, 1985–February 9, 1986, exh. cat., Munich 1985, p. 338 (my translation).

  67 See note 9.

  68 Joan M. Lukach, Hilla Rebay: In Search of the Spirit in Art, New York 1983, pp. 183–184 and 208; Levine 1996, p. 299.

  69 Rebay to Wright, August 12, 1943, in Lukach 1983, p. 187, and Levine 1996, pp. 320–321.

  70 Levine 1996, p. 319, Rebay to Wright, June 23, 1943, as quoted from Lukach 1983, p. 186. With respect to Rebay’s use of the word “dome,” Lukach explains: “Her occasional use of the phrase ‘dome of the spirit,’ which she used interchangeably with ‘cathedral’ or ‘temple,’ was an inadvertently suggestive lapse into another language, Dom being the German word for cathedral. The phrase conjures up the vision of a lofty and circular interior space – and in 1939, Rebay herself made a sketch for a circular exhibition gallery, all on one level with no stairs, making use of an ingenious flow of traffic from gallery to gallery” (p. 187).

  71 Levine 1996, p. 298, Fig. 291: 1943–1944 Schemes A/D.

  72 Wright to Rebay, July 25, 1945: “The model is up to the Dome” (his italics), in Lukach 1983, p. 191.

  73 For illustrations, see Rebay 1983, Figs. 41–42 (1944–1945), and Levine 1996, p. 329, Fig. 319 (September 1945) and p. 338, Fig. 326 (1951).

  74 Levine 1996, p. 342.

  75 On the Unity Temples as exemplifying this ideal of organic architecture, see Richard A. Etlin, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: The Romantic Legacy, Manchester 1994, pp. 47–48, and 206 n. 144, with account from Edgar Tafel, Apprentice to Genius: Years with Frank Lloyd Wright 1979, pp. 71–72.

  76 See MacDonald 2002, p. 74, and William C. Loerke, “A Rereading of the Interior Elevation of Hadrian’s Rotunda,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 49, no. 1, pp. 22–43; p. 42.

  77 Levine 1996, p. 487 n. 173.

  78 Levine 1996, p. 348.

  79 Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography, New York 1932, pp. 154 and 156.

  80 Levey and Greenhall 1983, s.v. “Encyclopedia,” p. 266.

  81 Boullée 1968, p. 127 (fol. 119v). The Encyclopédie had characterized the Royal Library as follows: “It is one of the most noble institutions. There is no expense more magnificent and more useful” (as quoted in French in Fritz Milkau and Georg Leyh, eds., Handbuch der Bibliothekwissenschaft, 4 vols., 2nd rev. ed., Wiesbaden 1957–1961; vol. 3, p. 14 [my translation]).

  82 Milkau and Leyh 1957–1961, vol. 2, pp. 863–867; vol. 3, pp. 10–11 and 14. See also, Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, 2nd ed., Cambridge 2005, pp. 16–17, who, reviewing the research of more recent scholars, confirms this conclusion and summarizes the expansion of literacy and book collecting among a wide range of social classes, even among the lower classes.

  83 Boullée 1968, p. 126 (fol. 119).

  84 Boullée 1968, p. 130 (fol. 121v).

  85 For illustrations of the project by Sobre, as well as the library design by Gisors discussed in the following, see Etlin 1994a, pp. 68–69.

  86 Patricia C. Sherwood and Joseph Michael Lasala, “Education and Architecture: The Evolution of the University of Virginia’s Academical Village,” in Richard Guy Wilson, ed., Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece, Bayly Art Museum of the University of Virginia, October 7, 1993–January 9, 1994, exh. cat., Charlottesville 1993, p. 9.

  87 Paul V. Turner, Joseph Ramée: International Architect of the Revolutionary Era, New York 1996, pp. 197–216.

  88 Benjamin Latrobe, sketch and letter of July 24, 1817, in Sherwood and Lasala 1993, p. 20 (Fig. 10).

  89 Frederick Doveton Nichols, Thomas Jefferson’s Architectural Drawings, Boston 1960, p. 9.

  90 Leland M. Roth, McKim, Mead and White, Architects, New York 1983, pp. 188–199.

  91 Claes Caldenby and Olof Hultin, eds., Asplund, Stockholm 1985, p. 92. For illustrations, see http://www.arkitekturmuseet.se/arkiv/, AM 1990–04–51, AM 1990–0452, AM 1990–04–54, or Stuart Wrede, The Architecture of Erik Gunnar Asplund, Cambridge, Mass., 1983, Figs. 100, 101, and 103.

  92 Elias Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault ... Gunnar Asplund and the Articulation of Space” [his ellipsis], in Caldenby and Hultin 1985, pp. 23–33; p. 29. Cornell also notes: “In a famous essay which was also a document of its age, Carl Nordenfalk compared the Stockholm Public Library to the Pantheon” (p. 29).

  93 Asplund as quoted in Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault,” in Caldenby and Hultin 1985, p. 25. Cornell also quotes Asplund on Lewerentz’s use of stairs to create a sense of anticipation, an effect that Asplund probably had in mind in his library design: “The original idea of the progressively higher terraces and the increasing upward gradient of the staircase have the effect of heightening expectation.” (Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault,” p. 25.)

  94 Asplund, as quoted in Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault,” in Caldenby and Hultin 1985, p. 23.

  95 Asplund, as quoted in Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault,” in Caldenby and Hultin 1985, p. 28. Cornell comments, “Asplund had created this room, populated by the cult objects of the time, like a miniature Pantheon.”

  96 Alvar Aalto, as quoted in Wrede 1983, p. 94.

  97 Wrede 1983, pp. 109–110 and 233 n. 77. Here I disagree with Wrede, who believes that the Cenotaph to Newton “was a mechanical model of the universe” rather than a “represent[ation of] the interior or the mind” and that Boullée’s library project “could, given its rectangular shape, hardly be interpreted as a metaphor for the mind.”

  98 For an illustration, see http://www.arkitekturmuseet.se/arkiv/, AM 1990–04–55, or Wrede 1983, Fig. 102.

  99 Asplund as quoted in Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault,” in Caldenby and Hultin 1985, p. 26.

  100 Cornell twice refers to the “narrowing staircase” of the first project as a “‘ladder to heaven.’” It is unclear if this phrase, presented in quotation marks, is from Asplund. Elias Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault,” in Caldenby and Hultin 1985, pp. 29 and 31.

  101 Karin Winter, “Den italienska resan,” Arkitektur 6, 1985, p. 15. I am grateful to Nicholas Adams for this reference. See also, Cornell, “The Sky as a Vault,” in Caldenby and Hultin 1985, p. 24.

  102 Leith 1991, p. 179 (Fig. 200, photograph of Lequeu’s handwritten note).

  103 For a longer discussion of the relationship of the Pantheon to the sublime and to its ongoing legacy, including Boullée’s architecture, see Richard A. Etlin, “Architecture and the Sublime,” in Timothy Costelloe, ed., The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present, Cambridge 2012, pp. 230–273.

  104 Boullée 1968, pp. 62–65 (fols. 77v–79v). This chapter is entitled, “De l’Essence des corps. De leurs propriétés. De leur analogie avec notre organisation.”

  105 Boullée 1968, p. 87 (fol. 92).

  106 Lemonnier 1924, vol. 8, p. 376.

  107 Edmund Burke, in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. J. T. Boulton, 1759, 2nd ed., Notre Dame 1968, pp. 74–76, 139–142.

  108 Boullée 1968, p. 64 (fol. 79).
r />   109 Burke repr. 1968, p. 78.

  110 [Joseph Addison], Essay no. 415, The Spectator (Thursday, June 26, 1712), as quoted in Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, New York 1963, p. 318. See also p. 319, and Colton 1979, p. 154.

  111 John Baillie, An Essay on the Sublime, 1747, New York repr. 1967, p. 4 (see also p. 6). In The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England, Ann Arbor 1960, p. 73, Samuel H. Monk credits Baillie with “very nearly evolv[ing] the idea of empathy.”

  112 Boullée 1968, p. 139 (fol. 127v).

  113 Boullée, p. 137 (fol. 127).

  114 Boullée, p. 156 (fol. 138).

  115 Boullée, pp. 138–139 (fol. 127v).