by Unknown
As an embodiment of the ideal of ancient architecture, the Pantheon has also served a provocative function. In Philipp Galles’s print King Josiah Destroys the Temple of Ashtoreth, Chemosh and Milchon, which was based on a design by Maarten van Heemskerck (Fig. 9.20),113 the ancient Roman central-plan building has been dismantled as a pagan sanctuary and lies in ruins. Heemskerck was very familiar with the Roman monuments since he had extensively studied and documented them in his sketchbooks while resident in Rome from 1532 to 1536. Here, he seems to have given iconographic form to an indictment by John Calvin and propagated its consequences. Calvin had reproached the early Church for idolatry since in his view, it had taken over the pagan monuments, imitated the practices of the ancients, and, instead of christianizing them, had succumbed to the ancient pagan religions.114
9.20. King Josiah Destroys the Temples of Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom; Philipp Galles after Maarten van Heemskerck. (Kupferstich, Amsterdam)
The majesty of the Pantheon and its legendary imagery is perhaps most strikingly expressed in an anecdote about Emperor Charles V that is still current in Rome to this day. In 1535 after his campaign in Tunis, the emperor visited Rome and celebrated a triumph all’antica, eight years after he had conquered and plundered the city in his terrible Sack of Rome. With his army, he processed like a Roman emperor along the Via Sacra to the Capitol. His most ardent wish at that time was to climb the dome of the Pantheon. In one version of the story, the son of the monument’s keeper was chosen to accompany the emperor alone during his vertiginous ascent. The feeling, or rather the dread, of standing on the edge of the open oculus, unprotected by any balustrade and looking down into the rotunda, where the dome plummets under one’s feet and one has no visible hold, is more than vertiginous; it is indescribable, unimaginable before one actually stands there. For an emperor, however, it was not possible to approach the wide-open oculus crawling on all fours and still less to turn around before arriving at the opening, particularly when accompanied by an adolescent attendant who had grown up with this cupola and for whom it aroused no fear. Indeed, the majesty of Charles V was meant to be revealed in the solemnity with which the visit took place. Naturally, the keeper later asked his son what it had been like standing there with the emperor on the dome of the Pantheon. According to the story, the son answered that he had suddenly been reminded of the dreadful Sack of Rome and the murderous occupation of the city by the emperor’s troops, for which this man had been responsible, and that at that moment he would have dearly liked to cast him down from the oculus. Knowing that such a remark alone could have spelled certain death equal to the real deed itself, the father is said to have replied to his hotheaded offspring: “My son, one doesn’t say such a thing; one does it!”
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) retold the story in a slightly adapted form in his Don Quixote. In this version, the role of the youth was assumed by a Roman knight who accompanied Charles V to the Rotunda,
which in antiquity was called the temple of all the gods and which now bears the better name of Church of All Saints and which is the best-preserved building of all those that were erected in pagan Rome, the one that most fully evinces the grandeur and magnificence of its founders. It takes the form of half an enormous orange, and it is brilliantly lit, even though the only light comes in through a window or rather a round lantern at the top, from which the Emperor surveyed the building. The Roman knight, standing at his side on the edge of the oculus, detailed all the subtlety and skill of that splendid construction and that memorable architecture.
On descending from the dome he then confessed to the emperor the feelings not of revenge but of thirst for fame aroused by the experience: “A thousand times, Most Sacred Majesty, I felt the urge to clasp you in my arms and hurl myself down with you from the lantern, to win eternal fame for myself.”
The Man of La Mancha tells the story to Sancho Panza as a parallel to the destruction of the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, by the sinner Herostratus: “he razed it to the ground, so that his name would live in future ages.”115 No artist, poet, or humanist of the Renaissance otherwise drew the parallel with the Seven Wonders of the World, although all, even John Calvin, regarded the Pantheon with the same deep veneration as those monuments. Only Michelangelo offered higher praise or perhaps it was only a way of exorcising the pagan temple: he is said to have described the Pantheon or, rather, the lower order of its interior as disegno non umano ma angelico.116
This text was written more than ten years ago. The original, fully illustrated German version has meanwhile been published in PEGASUS – Berliner Beiträge zum Nachleben der Antike 10, 2008, pp. 37–84.
1 Ernst R. Fiechter, “Der ionische Tempel am Ponte Rotto in Rom (S. Maria Egiziaca),” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 21, 1906, pp. 220–279; Arnold Nesselrath, Das Fossombroner Skizzenbuch, London 1993, pp. 115–120; Jean-Pierre Adam, La construction romaine. Matériaux et techniques, Paris 1984 (trans. as Roman Building: Materials and Techniques, Bloomington 1994); CensusID 151132.
2 Christiane Denker Nesselrath, Die Säulenordnungen bei Bramante, Worms 1990, pp. 47 and 127; Christiane Denker Nesselrath, “Bramante e l’ordine corinzio,” L’emploi des ordres dans l’architecture de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Guillaume, Paris 1992, pp. 83–96; pp. 86–89.
3 For Raphael, there was an essential difference between the architecture of antiquity and that of the Renaissance in their respective use of materials (Vincenzo Golzio, Raffaello nei documenti, nelle testimonianze di contemporanei e nella letteratura del suo secolo, Vatican City 1936, p. 85; John Shearman, Raphael in Early Modern Sources – 1483–1602, New Haven 2003, vol. 1, p. 520).
4 Ian Campbell, “The New St Peter’s: Basilica or Temple?” Oxford Art Journal 4, 1981, pp. 3–8; p. 5; F. Lucchini, The Pantheon, Rome 1996, p. 114.
5 Cf. as a parallel to this the way Maarten van Heemskerck programmatically exploits the Colosseum in his self-portrait (Matthias Winner, “‘Vedute’ in Flemish Landscape Drawings of the Late 16th Century,” Netherlandish Mannerism, ed. Görel Cavalli-Björkman, Stockholm 1985, p. 91).
6 On the medieval legends of the expulsion of the demons and the origin of the oculus, cf. Tilmann Buddensieg, “Raffaels Grab,” in Munuscula discipulorum. Kunsthistorische Studien Hans Kauffmann zum 70. Geburtstag 1966, ed. Tillmann Buddensieg and Matthias Winner, Berlin 1968, pp. 56–58, Fig. 40.
7 Giovanni Eroli, Raccolta generale delle iscrizioni pagane e cristiane esistite ed esistenti nel Pantheon di Roma, Narni 1895, pp. 343–438; Buddensieg 1968.
8 Eroli 1895, p. 438.
9 Eroli 1895, pp. 439–440.
10 Eroli 1895, p. 440; Zygmunt Wazbinski, “Annibale Carracci e l’Accademia di San Luca: a proposito di un monumento eretto in Pantheon nel 1674,” in Les Carrache et les décors profanes (Actes du Colloque organisé par l’École Française de Rome 1986, Collection de l’École Française de Rome 106), Rome 1988, p. 562.
11 Marisanta Di Prampero de Carvalho, Perché Giovanni fu sepolto al Pantheon, Udine 2003.
12 Wazbinski 1988.
13 Wazbinski 1988, pp. 562–563.
14 Eroli 1895, p. 232; Roberto Vighi, The Pantheon, Rome 1964, p. 48.
15 Wazbinski 1988, p. 563; Di Prampero de Carvalho 2003, p. 17.
16 Florence, Uffizi, inv. 164 A; CensusID 44648. John Shearman, “Raphael, Rome, and the Codex Escurialensis,” Master Drawings 15, 1977, pp. 107–146, esp. pp. 109–117, Plates 1–3; Arnold Nesselrath, “Raphael’s Archeological Method,” Raffaello a Roma, Rome 1986, pp. 358–361, Figs. 5–9.
17 Antonio Muñoz, “La decorazione medioevale del Pantheon,” Nuovo bulletino di archeologia cristiana 18, 1912, pp. 25–35; pp. 32–34.
18 Richard Krautheimer, Rome – Profile of a City, 312–1308, Princeton 1980, p. 56.
19 Flavio Biondo, Roma Ristaurata et Italia Illustrata, ed. Lucio Fauno, Venice 1558, fol. 65; Ferdinando Castagnoli, Carlo Cecchelli, Gustavo Giovanno
ni, and Mario Zocca, Topografia e urbanistica di Roma, Bologna 1958, p. 350, Plate LXXXV.2; Tod A. Marder, “Alexander VII, Bernini and the Urban Setting of the Pantheon in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, 1991, pp. 273–292; pp. 273–276.
20 El Escorial, Codex Escurialensis, fol. 43 v; CensusID 67021. Cf. Hermann Egger with contributions by Christian Hülsen und Adolf Michaelis, Codex Escurialensis: Ein Skizzenbuch aus der Werkstatt Domenico Ghirlandajos, Vienna 1905–1906, vol. 1, p. 116; Thomas Ashby, Topographical Study in Rome in 1581, London 1916, p. 131.
21 Paris, Louvre inv. 11029 r; CensusID 64421. Cf. Ashby 1916, p. 131; Castagnoli et al. 1958, p. 350, Plate LXXXV.2.
22 CensusID 63876; Roberto Valentini and Giuseppe Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, vol. 3, Rome 1946, p. 159; Cristina Nardella, Il fascino di Roma nel medioevo, Rome 1997, pp. 80, 126, and 162–163.
23 Rodolfo Lanciani, Storia degli scavi di Roma e notizie intorno le collezioni romane di antichità, Rome 1902–1912, pp. 15 and 51–52. Since it is deduced from this mention that they were found close to the Pantheon, this argument holds no longer. A provenance from the ancient Roman Iseum Campense, however, does not need to be excluded.
24 The period of Leo X’s reinstallation of the antiquities in front of the Pantheon can be deduced from the term of office of the maestri delle strade Bartolomeo della Valle and Raimondo Capodiferro. Cf. Emilio Re: “Maestri di strade,” Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 43, 1920, pp. 5–102. I wish to thank Stefan Bauer and Andreas Rehberg for this information.
25 Eroli 1895, pp. 451–452.
26 Florence, Uffizi, inv. 160 S r; CensusID 43556. The identification of the draftsman with Baldassare Peruzzi himself, as proposed by Christoph Luitpold Frommel (“Peruzzis römische Anfänge,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 27/28, 1991–1992, pp. 137–182), is untenable for various reasons. A comparison between the handwriting on the sheet and that of genuine Peruzzi drawings is unconvincing; Frommel (1991–1992, p. 174, n. 96) totally ignores in his argument the dating of the sheet by the same hand in Bayonne, Musée Bonnat, inv. 1342 r, to the third decade of the sixteenth century (Arnold Nesselrath, “Due candelabri antichi restaurati al tempo di Raffello,” in Raffaello in Vaticano, ed. Fabrizio Mancinelli, Anna Maria De Strobel, Giovanni Morello, and Arnold Nesselrath, exh. cat., Milan 1984, pp. 98–99, fig. on 99, and Nesselrath 1993, pp. 152–153) and cuts off the crucial part of the sheet in his illustration (Fig. 21); the dating of the veduta of the Pantheon being discussed here, which must postdate the beginning of the pontificate of Leo X in 1513 since it incorporates the statues in their Leonine setting, contradicts an early dating, as proposed by Frommel, yet it is this early dating that is the presupposition for an attribution to Peruzzi. (Cf. Arnold Nesselrath, “Il Pantheon,” in La Roma di Leon Battista Alberti. Umanisti, architetti et artisti alla scoperta dell’antico nella città del Quattrocento, ed. Francesco Paolo Fiore in collaboration with Arnold Nesselrath, exh. cat., Milan 2005, p. 200, cat. II.2.5). Cf. Alfonso Bartoli, I monumenti antichi di Roma nei disegni degli Uffizi di Firenze, 6 vols., Rome 1914–1922, vol. I, Tav. 13, Fig. 27; vol. 6, p. 9; Doris Gruben and Gottfried Gruben, “Die Türe des Pantheon,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 104, 1997, pp. 3–74; p. 11, Fig. 6 (with the old attribution to Cronaca).
27 Berlin, SMPK, Kupferstichkabinett, Heemskerck-Album I, fol. 10 r (Christian Hülsen and Hermann Egger, Die römischen Skizzenbücher von Marten van Heemskerck, 7 vols., Berlin 1913, repr. 1916, vol. 1, p. 7; CensusID 43444) and Heemskerck-Album II, fol. 2 r (Hülsen and Egger 1913, repr. 1916, vol. 2, p. 3; CensusID 44703). The drawings of the Dutch artist so-called Anonymus B were made after 1538; cf. Ilja M. Veldman, “Heemskercks Romeinse tekeningen en ‘Anonymus B,’” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 38, 1987, pp. 369–382.
28 Carlo Montani, “Il Pantheon e i suoi recenti restauri,” Capitolium 8, 1932, pp. 417–426; p. 426; Susanna Pasquali, Il Pantheon: architettura e antiquaria nel Settecento a Roma, Modena 1996, p. 162; Susanna Pasquali, Roma sacra – guida alle chiese della città eterna, vol. 8: Santa Maria ad Martyres (Pantheon), Rome 1996, p. 45.
29 Shearman 1977, pp. 109–117.
30 Pasquali 1996b, p. 46.
31 Muñoz 1912, pp. 32–34, Fig. 5.
32 Eroli 1895, p. 250; Vighi 1964, p. 41, fig. on p. 43; Anna Cavallaro, Antoniazzo Romano e gli Antoniazzeschi, Udine 1992, p. 268, no. 146, Fig. 250; Pasquali 1996b, p. 46.
33 For reasons of conservation, the fresco has been detached from the wall but reinstalled in the same niche: Cavallaro 1992, pp. 268–269, no. 147, Fig. 251.
34 Vighi 1964, p. 41.
35 Muñoz 1912, p. 32, Fig. 4.
36 Shearman 1977, pp. 111–115. In his attempt to explain the unusual two-part approach of the draftsman, John Shearman proposed that it is the work of two different artists. After cautious doubts had been expressed about this supposed differentiation of hands in the sheet (Nesselrath 1986a, p. 359), the current explanation makes the feature of the two-part elevation, first and rightly remarked by Shearman, less peculiar and tends to support even the attribution of both halves of the drawing to Raphael. It further underlines Shearman’s identification of Raphael’s drawing as the prototype on which all copies and indirect copies depend.
37 The sheet in the Uffizi, however, does not comprise in toto all of the studies that Raphael completed in the Pantheon in 1506. Cf. Nesselrath 1986a, pp. 360–361, and Arnold Nesselrath, “I libri di disegni di antichità – tentativo di una tipologia,” Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, vol. 3, ed. Salvatore Settis, Torino 1986, p. 110.
38 Christoph Luitpold Frommel, “Raffaello e la sua carriera architettonica,” in Raffaello Architetto, ed. Christoph Luitpold Frommel, Manfredo Tarfuri, and Stefano Ray in collaboration with Howard Burns and Arnold Nesselrath, exh. cat., Milan 1984, pp. 13–46; p. 17. On the question of the originality of the architectural background of the Madonna del Baldacchino, left unfinished at Raphael’s departure for Rome, cf. Marco Chiarini, Marco Ciatti, and Serena Padovani (Raffaello a Pitti: La Madonna del Baldacchino – storia e restauro, Florence 1991, pp. 17–18), who reexamined the position adopted by Peter Anselm Riedl (“Raffaels ‘Madonna del Baldacchino,’”Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 8, 1957–1959, pp. 239–246). Cf. J. Meyer zur Capellen, Raphael, vol. 1, Landshut 2001, cat. 40, for an illustration.
39 Shearman 1977, pp. 128–130, Fig. 6; Frommel 1984, p. 17.
40 Paris, Louvre, inv. 19051 v. I would like to thank the late Wolfgang Lotz for the reference to this sheet. Cf. Nesselrath 2005, p. 191, fig. on p. 192. On Hermann Vischer, see Wolfgang Lotz, “Zu Hermann Vischers d. J. Aufnahmen italienischer Bauten,” in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Hertzianae (Römische Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana 16), Munich 1961, pp. 167–174; see Emmanuel Starcky, Dessins de Dürer et de la Renaissance germanique, Paris 1991, pp. 101–104, and Volker Plagemann, “Tod in Bologna – Hans Cranachs Reise 1537 – Zur Frühgeschichte der Künstlerreisen nach Italien,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 41, 2002, pp. 37–155; pp. 110–113, especially Fig. 38.
41 Eroli 1895, p. 430; Sible de Blaauw, “Das Pantheon als christlicher Tempel,” Bild und Formensprache der spätantiken Kunst. Hugo Brandenburg zum 65 Geburtstag, Boreas 17, Münster, 1994, pp. 13–26; p. 22.
42 Pasquali, 1996a, p. 139.
43 Eroli 1895, pp. 239 and 430; De Blaauw 1994b, p. 22.
44 Tod A. Marder, “Bernini and Alexander VII: Criticism and Praise of the Pantheon in the Seventeenth Century” Art Bulletin 71, no. 4, 1989, pp. 628–645; p. 629, Fig. 3; Angela Cipriani, “Lavori per l’isolamento e il restauro del Pantheon,” in Bernini in Vaticano, exh. cat., Rome 1981, pp. 192–197; Pasquali 1996a, p. 69, Fig. 34.
45 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Chigi P VII 9, fols. 108 r and 110 r. Marder 1989, p. 629; De Blaauw 1994b, pp. 20–22, Figs. 3–4. The flap showing the altar in elevation on foli
o 110 r is located at the lower left of the sheet but is not visible in the photograph available to us.