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15.3 The Pantheon and Its Impact on Later Architecture
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From the course by Yale University
Roman Architecture
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From the lesson
Rome and a Villa: Hadrian's Pantheon and Tivoli Retreat
Architecture in and around Rome during Hadrian’s reign: the Temple of Venus and Roma possibly designed by Hadrian; the Pantheon, combining the marble porch and pediment of a traditional Greco-Roman temple with a vast concrete cylindrical drum, hemispherical dome, central oculus, and theatrical light effects; the Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli, where the emperor recreated buildings and works of art observed during his empire-wide travels; and the Mausoleum of Hadrian (Castel Sant'Angelo).
Meet the Instructors
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
We see here the facade of the Pantheon as it looks today.
You have to think away this very attractive but nonetheless mars the view.
Of the, of the facade of the Pantheon that was put up in the Renaissance.
And you have to imagine the building now stands
in isolation without its colonnades and without its forecourt.
So you have to try to imagine them.
But you can see how very well preserved the Pantheon is.
The ground level has shifted, so we don't
see the very tall podium that was once there.
Although there have been some excavations around
it that demonstrate that it is indeed there.
Or part of it is indeed there.
But we can see the columns across the front, we can see an inscription.
We can see the pediment and the attic.
And this is a good view, because although you see
the dome peeping up a little bit on the top.
It gives you some sense of when you stood in the colonnade,
walking toward it. That the forecourt, walking toward it.
That you would have only seen essentially the most traditional part of the building.
And that is the column supporting the pediment, with the dome behind.
This is a detail of the inscription of the building.
We can also see the columns, you can see that they are gray granite.
I've a better view in a moment, gray granite with white marble capitols.
The inscription
is fascinating, it tells us that M.Agrippa, Marcus Agrippa.
That's the famous Marcus Agrippa, the childhood friend, confidante, son-in-law.
Firsthand man, one-time heir to Augustus, Marcus Agrippa.
LF, Licius Filius, the son of Lucius, COS, COS consul.
Consul tertium, for the third time, fecit, made it, This tells us Marcus Agrippa.
Consul for the third time, son of Lucius, made it.
Made the Pantheon.
What's that all about?
Marcus Agrippa lived in the age of Augustus.
Well, we know there was an earlier Pantheon on
this site, that Marcus Agrippa was responsible for commissioning.
Marcus Agrippa like Augustus. Commissioned a lot of buildings in Rome.
He also commissioned them in the provinces.
We'll look at some of those when we go out to the provinces.
Marcus Agrippa, a major building program in Rome.
Including a pantheon, a temple to all the gods.
And we don't, that pantheon no longer exists.
Although there've been some excavations that have
discovered some of it underneath the current building.
But it stood on this very site. And we know from a literary description.
That it had a caryatid porch.
Which is perhaps not surprising in the context of Agustin architecture.
Remember the caryatids in the Forum of Augustus.
That we looked
at earlier in the term.
So we know, that Marcus Agrippa actually built Rome's first Pantheon.
Both its first temple to the gods, on this very site.
When Hadrian built his own Pantheon on the same site,
he decided to piously reference the earlier building of Marcus Agrippa.
Telling us that Marcus Agrippa made this, made
a building that originally stood on this site.
Which he is basically very modestly saying
he restored.
Of course, this building that he made has
nothing to do undoubtedly with the Pantheon in Rome.
It's a very different and much more sophisticated building.
But it was a very modest thing to do.
But I think there was a you know a method to his madness.
In the sense that he, un, he was underscoring
by so doing his relationship, once again, to Augustus.
Which was obviously very important for
him to do.
But this inscription confused a lot of scholars for a long time [LAUGH].
Who actually called this originally a an Augustan building.
You can see the pediment up above. You can see all the holes there.
Those are the attachment marks for sculpture that would have stood.
That would have been located in this pediment that no longer survives.
Here's another view showing the gray, the light gray granite columns.
The white Corinthian capitals; all of these magnificently
carved, very high quality, artist, architects.
And artisans here.
By the way, I forgot to mention when we talked about
the Temple of Venus in Rome and the use of Greek marble.
That Hadrian not only brought in Greek
marble, but he brought in Greek marble cutters.
Marble carvers who were responsible for working on these.
So he wanted the very best, those who are most
familiar with carving Greek marble to be used for his buildings.
And they were undoubtedly
used for this one as well.
And we can see the depth of the porch, I think
also from this view of the Corinthian columns of that porch.
It's very hard in a classroom in New Haven even with outstanding slides
To be able to give you a sense of the experience that one has.
At the surprise that one has as one walks through the door of the Pantheon.
We see the
doors opened here. They are bronze doors.
They are original doors from this extremely well preserved structure.
And the reason that it is so well preserved, is because like other
buildings in Rome, it was reused in later times as a church primarily.
With a wonderful name, Santa Maria Rotunda.
Saint Mary, the rotund Mary essentially.
Which is perfectly perfectly chosen.
For a building with a giant rotunda, with
the great cylindrical drum that the building has.
We see those doors opened up here.
And as one walk through this very traditional
porch, through the original bronze doors, into the interior.
One is struck by the extraordinary nature of the interior of the pantheon.
Which you see over here.
And all you're looking at here is the uppermost part.
With the
with the dome, essentially.
Because, and the reason is, because it is near the.
Even the human eye, both eyes, can't take in
the, the extent of this interior all in one glance.
And even if one uses the widest of wide len, angle lenses.
You get a tremendous amount of distortion.
And you can't really take the whole thing in at once.
Which is what makes it extraordinary. And one has to rely instead
on this painting by Panini, that shows you the grandeur beneath the dome.
It gives you a better idea than any image I can show you.
However professional, of what the interior of the Pantheon actually looks like.
And you can see in this Panini painting the wonderful marble revetment.
The marble floor the the, the dome with its coffers.
There are 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 row, yeah 5 rows of 28 coffers each.
140 coffers in all.
They were likely gilded in antiquity.
You see that there is an oculus through
which light streams down on to that gilding.
Down on to the marble incrustation.
The marble incrustation, by the way, extremely well preserved.
This is about our best example of ancient
Roman marble.
Not all of it is ancient, but a good part, portion of it is.
And it gives you a very good sense of what
some of these marble buildings would have looked like in antiquity.
And I show you in detail of some of the original marble revetment over here.
And this is what those Pompeiians wished their walls actually were.
Beautiful marbles of all different colors brought
from all different parts of the world.
So, even though Hadrian
chose Proconnesian marble for his Temple of Venus in Rome.
His Greek building, which we really need to think of
as a kind of Greek import, for this more Roman building.
He is following in the footsteps of Nero and the Flavians.
And using multi-colored marble, both for the revetment on the wall.
And the marble pavement down below.
Most of this building again, it's very well preserved.
Is its original, is the original structure,
the original columns.
The original pillasters still extremely well preserved in the Pantheon.
Because it was used over time as a church, there
are lots of accoutrements that one would expect in a church.
Various Saints in niches and so on, and so forth.
So much of the sculpture is, is, is from the, a later period.
And it even served, has served as a burial place
for famous Italians.
Not the least of which was Raphael, the famous Renaissance painter.
Who you'll remember left a graffito when he went down.
Into the subterranean chambers of Nero's domus aurea.
He was buried here, and his tomb is one
of the high points for most visitors to this structure.
You see it here.
It dwarfs, to most people's minds, the tomb of Victor Emanuel.
Whom you see over here, on the left hand side of the screen.
But note all of that Roman symbolism.
You know the, eagle with outstretched wings.
And the Amazonian pelta and so on. All of those symbols of Roman power still
very much used by [COUGH], dynasts modern dynasts like Victor Emanuel.
The dome of the Pantheon had the largest diameter of any dome up
to this point.
We know that it was, the diameter of the Pantheon is 142 feet.
And
if we compare it to the other large dome in Rome, that of Saint Peter's.
We find that the Pantheon dome still surpasses St. Peter's.
St. Peter's is 139 feet in diameter, so just a bit smaller.
Now, any of you who have been both in the Pantheon
and St. Peter's, will probably say to me, wait a minute here.
The dome of St. Peter's actually looks
larger when you stand in front, underneath it.
And I show you a view of
that dome here.
The reason it does look a bit larger is the dome of St. Peter's is taller.
So volumetrically, it looks bigger. And it visually looks bigger.
But it isn't, in terms of its diameter.
In diameter, the dome of the Pantheon is
still the largest dome in the city of Rome.
And as you look at this dome and compare it to Saint Peter's.
One can't help but think, and think back to Domitian,
and his Dominus et Deus, and his vaults. And so on and so forth.
The whole idea being having the dome of heaven over ones head.
I think one can't help but think when one
looks at this, that there may be some reference here.
Both to the orb of the Earth, and to the dome of heaven.
And it is certainly a, a appropriate symbol
for a, a building that honors all the gods.
I think it's important to to at this juncture, to say something about her.
To compare the most important Greek temple, the Parthenon.
On the acropolis in Athens.
With the most significant Roman temple the Pantheon.
To see that we have really come from an exterior to an interior architecture.
Then in the case of the Parthenon, fifth century BC, Athenian Acropolis.
They are thinking primarily of a building
that interacts with the rock of the Acropolis.
And with the urban landscape, and in other
in contexts these Greek buildings interact directly with nature.
That's the way the Greeks thought about their buildings.
Essentially as an exterior structure.
And we see the Romans following suit in their emphasis on facade.
The facade of temples in their own religious architecture.
But with the Pantheon, that changes.
Yes, it does have a facade, it does have a pediment in the front.
It does have a traditional porch.
So that's a nod to traditional temple architecture.
But once you go through that porch into the structure.
And see that great cylindrical drum.
The hemispherical dome, the light streaming through.
You're in this, this totally new interior
world that has no precedent in early Roman architecture.
And that had a huge impact on later Byzantine architecture.
Medieval, especially Byzantine architecture, in particular.
Go to Isanbul and see the Hagia Sophia or the Blue Mosque.
They owe every thing to the dome of the Pantheon.
So we see this final, this real transition here.
A transition also in building materials from stone to concrete construction.
A few
more views of this of the interior of the dome of the Pantheon.
These are very dramatic in black and white.
And you can see it's, it's just if you're in Rome, and have the time.
It's a great deal of fun to go and look at the Pantheon at different times of day.
Because the light has such an impact on what the interior looks like.
And go, go in there in the morning, take a look.
Then go out have a long lunch,
glass of wine.
Come back later, and see, see what has happened.
And it's also fun to be there when it rains.
It's interesting to just have the rain come down and collect.
There is a drain, but it doesn't always work [LAUGH] all that well.
So I'll see water collecting on the edges of the floor.
In this extraordinary building.
One last view.
I love taking views of the, I mean,
I take, I have zillions of images [LAUGH] that
I've taken including this one.
Of the interior of the Pantheon at all different times of day.
But I think it, it behooves us to notice and to say.
That in, in this kind of new interior architecture.
This architecture of interior surprise it's not only the vault itself.
It's not only the concrete construction, or the marble revetment.
Light plays a, a, a very important role. And we've
seen light playing a very important role from the times
of the of the domus, of, of the domus Italica.
Up through and the sanctuary at Terachina, for example.
Up to where we are today. But never more important than here.
Light that streams through the occulus.
Light that is used not only to
illuminate this building, and illuminate it extremely well.
But also to create drama, to create drama. And you have to imagine it even
more dramatic when the, when the coffers were gilded.
And when the marble down below may have been even brighter still.
The marble pavement, which I didn't show you is also extremely well preserved.
So this light, this light plays a very important and dramatic role in this new,
highly developed interior architecture. And I, I know, I personally know
of no other building that one can visit and experience.
That gives you a better sense than this one, of the divine presence on Earth.
Where there is one god, multi-gods as were honored here.
You really get a sense of spirituality
when you stand in this extraordinary temple.
And really do get a sense of the divine presence, I think, on Earth.
I mentioned that the Pantheon has,
has spawned lots of clone, you know, has, has
lots of buildings [LAUGH] have been cloned from the Pantheon.
Both in ancient times, and I'll show you a couple of examples later in the semester.
But also in more modern times. There are lots of examples.
Woolsey Hall, for example, here on campus is a kind of a Pantheon.
But look look at the most, the most obvious example in the United States.
Is the not only the Monticello,
but also Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia.
The rotunda at the University of Virginia.
Which you see here, is clearly based exactly on the Pantheon.
Thomas Jefferson a great fan of ancient architecture.
His libraries, personal library has lots of books on Roman architecture.
But I like.
You know when you look at a view of the rotunda, and the lawn at the University.
Which I took my first teaching job was at UVA.
I taught
there for 3 years.
But but when you look at this, when you look at this building.
The, the lawn at UVA with the Rotunda. You can't help but wonder if Thomas
Jefferson didn't know that the Pantheon in Rome had that forecourt.
Because the, the, the Rotunda faces the, the wrong way.
It faces this way.
But none the less, he's got behind it in his own design.
His extraordinary rectangular court.
That does conjure up exactly what the pantheon looked like in Rome.
A few very quick views of the pantheon, I just hate to let it go.
But just some quick views of the Pantheon.
One of the best ways of seeing it.
It's surrounded by not only a wonderful piazza.
Which is a great place to eat gelato or have a glass of wine.
But there are, you can, you can encounter
it from a number of narrow streets.
And that whole element of surprise is still there.
You know, you're walking along the street Wow, all
of the sudden there it is in front of you.
And you can see that very well here as you begin to get a glimpse of it.
With regard to eating around the Pantheon.
I recommend one of my absolute favorite restaurants in Rome.
Which is easy to remember because it's Fortunato al Pantheon.
You see it over here with its wonderful outdoor space.
And it's white white umbrellas.
Right across from the Pantheon, directly across is a McDonalds.
I never, you know, the golden arch is a
really very much like a Roman aqueduct, don't you think?
Us, so, references, yeah, I told you there were residences everywhere.
[UNKNOWN].
Don't eat at, you know you can eat at McDonald's at any time.
Go to the other one much more interesting.
And it has the best, I've never had this anywhere else.
It has, veal scallopini al gorgonzola, with gorgonzola.
Very thin layer of gorgonzola, delicious.
I also told you I was going to keep you abreast of the latest on gelato in Rome.
We've talked about Tre Scalini, so I just wanted to show you Della Palma.
If you're standing at the Pantheon Restaurant.
Look to the right.
You're going to see Della Palma. P, A, L, M,
A. It's, of the four best.
Actually, I think its the fourth.
Its not my absolute favorite.
But if you like it's a little more Americanized.
As you can see from this selection.
Notice their mars bars specialità. As well as some of their other flavors.
My favorite, personal favorite is zabaglione.
Which you see over here.
But just to whet your appetite early in the morning.
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