Fig. 11.9 Rome, Pantheon. (Fototeca)
The first Hadrianic building that could have been designed after the meeting with Antinous is the Pantheon ([Fig. 11.9]), “the oldest important roofed building in the world that still stands intact.” On the evidence of the brick-stamps, its framework was complete by A.D. 125, and the whole building perhaps finished by 128. Until 1892 the building passed as the work of Augustus’ lieutenant Agrippa, because the inscription that runs across the architrave of the rectangular porch in front of the drum, “Marcus Agrippa built this when he was consul for the third time” (27 B.C.), was taken at its face value. But in 1892 the entire fabric was found to be full of stamped bricks of Hadrianic date, and the building therefore Hadrianic throughout (with Severan restorations, also recorded in an inscription). The Agrippa inscription partly follows the Roman practice of repeating the original dedication in a restored structure, partly reflects the Emperor’s mock modesty. His involuted nature found satisfaction in seldom inscribing his own name on the buildings he designed. His contemporaries knew well enough who the architect was. And the elaborate mystification served also to point up his identifying himself with Augustus, which we saw first in the Temple of Venus and Rome. Whether Hadrian thought of himself as a new Augustus or not, certainly Augustan domed buildings at the seaside resort of Baiae, on the Bay of Naples, influenced his architecture. Hadrian played the game out in the way he handled the transition between the circular and the rectangular parts of his plan ([Fig. 11.10]). On either side of the entrance to the drum, behind the porch, he designed rectangular projections with huge half-vaulted apses cut out of the front: one of these apses would have contained a statue of Agrippa, the other of Augustus. And Romans passing between them (through the great bronze entrance doors that still survive) would marvel at how self-effacing was their Emperor-architect.
Fig. 11.10 Rome, Pantheon. (G. Lugli, Mon. Ant., 3, fac. p. 126)
Fig. 11.11 Rome, Pantheon, interior, 19th-century reconstruction, drawing by fellows of French Academy in Rome.
The interior ([Fig. 11.11]) carries forward that liberation of religious architecture from the Greek tyranny of the rectangular box, which can only come about through the use of poured concrete, and which we saw first in the Sanctuary of Fortune at Praeneste. Here Hadrian plays with geometrical abstractions, as in the Teatro Marittimo. The game is to describe a sphere in a cylinder: if the curve of the dome were projected beyond the point where it meets the vertical walls of the drum, the bottom of the curve would be just tangent with the floor. The very pavement, with its alternation of squares and circles, plays up the geometrical jeu d’esprit. (Beneath this pavement lies the simple rectangular plan of Agrippa’s temple.) Furthermore, both the plan and the interior view show that the walls of the drum are not solid, and that they continue the architect’s vast toying with geometrical concepts. The walls are lightened with niches (for statues; one, of Venus, wore Cleopatra’s pearls in her ears). The niches are alternately rectangular and curved; the result is that the hemispherical cupola is supported not on a solid wall but on eight huge piers. In order to reduce the bearing weight of the superstructure upon the niches, into the concrete fabric above the apertures were built, concealed by polychrome marble revetment, elaborate brick relieving arches, which run as barrel vaults right through the walls. The cupola itself is designed with sunken stepped coffers, to lighten it, and to exaggerate the perspective, and to play yet again with the alternation of curve and straight line. The concrete of the cupola, which is thinner toward the top, is made with pumice, the lightest material available. But in spite of the pains taken to lighten the enormous mass, the piers gave under the weight of the cupola, and external buttresses proved necessary (see plan, [Fig. 11.10]), which spoiled the exterior effect. Hadrian is an amateur to the end; his vaults do not hold, his cupolas need bracing, his foundations give—and yet the essence of his designs has lasted forever.
The Pantheon is lighted solely through the great hole, thirty feet across, at the top of the cupola. (The building is so large that the inconvenience from rain is negligible.) The best possible idea of the perfection of this great building is to be gained by looking down into the interior from high above, from the edge of the hole in the roof. This dizzy height, at which one may glory or despair according to the measure of one’s acrophobia, is reached by a stair behind the left apse in the porch. The stair gives access to the cornice at the top of the drum; one then walks half-way round the cornice, which is wide but unrailed, to the back of the drum, where a flight of steps, only half-railed, leads up over the lead plates (the original gilt bronze was sent to Constantinople in the seventh century), to the aperture, from which those with a head for heights can gauge the aesthetic satisfaction of realizing that the interior is exactly as high as it is wide. The total effect, massive, daring, playing with space, yet not entirely successful technically, reflects the man.
One wonders what Hadrian’s tortured and cynical spirit would make of the vicissitudes his building has suffered. A Barberini pope in the seventeenth century used the bronze of the porch roof to make the canopy over the high altar of St. Peter’s, and guns for the papal fortress, Castel Sant’ Angelo (which had once been Hadrian’s mausoleum); of this vandalism the wags of 1625 made the famous epigram, “Quod non fecerunt barbari fecerunt Barberini,” which might be paraphrased, “The Barberini rush in where barbarians fear to tread.” At the same time Bernini added a pair of ridiculous bell towers—called “the ass’s ears”—which were not taken down until the nineteenth century. Perhaps Hadrian would be better pleased to know that men like himself were buried in his building: a great creative artist—Raphael—and two Italian kings.