The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present

by Unknown

  On orders from King Umberto I in late December 1883, the Ministry of Public Instruction organized the relocation of the king’s remains to the central tribune on the west side of the Pantheon, supplanting the Chapel of the Holy Spirit.87 The actual translation ceremony took place on January 5, 1884, during the national pilgrimage events. Sometime in mid-1884, the Fine Arts Commission requested designs from Giuseppe Sacconi (1854–1905) and Manfredo Manfredi (1859–1927) for a permanent tomb sited within the central tribune. The two young architects had come in first and second, respectively, in the second competition for the Victor Emanuel Monument on the Capitoline Hill on June 24, 1884, and their rival designs for the tomb conformed to the official, neo-antique architectural language of the state. Both had trained at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Rome under Luigi Rosso, the designer of the funeral decorations at the Pantheon in 1878. While Sacconi won the monument competition, Manfredi received the commission to design the royal tomb as a “consolation” prize.88

  Although Baccelli’s project for a central tomb failed to materialize, its strongly neo-antique character remained a salient part of the eventual tomb. After experimenting with a wide variety of schemes involving freestanding or engaged sarcophagi and elaborate relief sculptures on the tribune wall, Manfredi arrived at a final design by 1887. Aesthetic respect for the uncomplicated forms of the Pantheon dictated a highly simplified design, far removed from Baccelli’s grandiose vision. His scheme comprised a variety of motifs assiduously copied from ancient models, including a pair of candelabras, a pagan altar – so-called by one contemporary commentator89 – and an imperial eagle framed by a wreath and clutching bound fasces, this last an ancient symbol of unity highly appropriate to the king who oversaw the unification of Italy. A simple gilded inscription on the face of the main bronze panel – VITTORIO EMANUELE II / PADRE DELLA PATRIA – celebrated his most famous and explicitly imperial epithet (Plate XIV). The scheme emphasized the ancient spirit of the building to such an extent that it contained no reference to its Christian purpose. The ministry’s Fine Arts Commission (which by 1887 included among its members Manfredi’s rival, Giuseppe Sacconi) made significant modifications to the design. They removed the pagan altar and added bronze crosses in the panels flanking the tomb, to give the design its definitive appearance. In execution, the tomb also contributed to the restoration of the building, with the recreation of the ancient marble placage on the niche wall. The bronze components of the tomb employed more symbolically charged material, acquired by melting cannon that had fired in defense of the Roman Republic in 1849 and in one of the Risorgimento battles of 1859.90

  Perhaps the most significant aspect of the tomb as designed by Manfredi was the absence of the traditional effigy of the deceased. This aspect of the composition provided further evidence that the two-bodies tradition exerted a strong influence on the thinking of Sinistra leaders. According to this tradition, “the two bodies, unquestionably united in the living king, were visibly segregated on the king’s demise” and that of the two, effigies represented the immortal body.91 In Rome, the government interpreted this tenet in the most literal way possible: Vittorio Emanuele’s mortal body remained in his dynastic mausoleum of the Pantheon; the king’s immortal body – the Italian royal office – was commemorated by the Victor Emanuel Monument on the Capitoline, where an effigy of the king appears in the glorified form of an imperial equestrian statue (Fig. 12.8). By maintaining the important distinction between the king’s two bodies, Sinistra leaders ensured that the national monument would remain a permanent symbol of the Italian state’s secular authority.

  12.8. Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome, by Giuseppe Sacconi, 1885–1911. (Photo author)

  During the 1890s, the identity of the Pantheon changed in a highly unexpected and, for Guido Baccelli, an unwelcome way. Investigatory work conducted in January 1892 by Georges Chédanne (1861–1940), a French pensionnaire in Rome, revealed brickstamps throughout the structure dating to the time of Hadrian, and not Agrippa as stated in the frieze inscription.92 The redating, and concomitant reattribution, of this most venerable relic of Roman antiquity brought Chédanne considerable attention: by year’s end, he had received the Crown of Italy medal from the Italian government.93 The Ministry of Public Instruction, under Pasquale Villari, moved quickly to excavate inside the temple to find Agrippa’s Pantheon. The work, carried out in 1892 and 1893, was supervised by Luca Beltrami, an art historian, trained architect, and member of parliament from Milan, who had supported Chédanne’s work.94 He was assisted by Pier Olinto Armanini, a 22-year-old prize-winning architect in Rome, who created the drawings that documented their findings. The exhibition of Armanini’s drawings in Rome in 1895 brought the news of the Hadrianic provenance of the Pantheon to the attention of Public Instruction Minister Guido Baccelli,95 evidently for the first time. Earlier that year, Baccelli had undertaken the recreation of the original bronze inscription dedicated to Agrippa – 25 one-meter-tall letters – using 800 kilograms of bronze acquired from the Ministry of War.96 Upon hearing from Armanini that the Pantheon was not built by Agrippa, Baccelli reacted angrily: “Yet I have placed in bronze letters on the frieze of the Pantheon AGRIPPA FECIT; until I shall be with Minerva, vivaddio! Hadrian has nothing to do with it!”97 His vehement reaction suggests that his restoration of the Agrippan inscription had been an attempt to suppress the building’s newly uncovered Hadrianic provenance and that the association of the Pantheon with the Julian dynasty had been a significant part of its appeal when Crispi had selected it as the final resting place for Vittorio Emanuele II.

  The burial in the Pantheon in 1900 of King Umberto I, Vittorio Emanuele’s son and successor who was assassinated in the northern Italian city of Monza, strengthened its role as a dynastic mausoleum. He was interred in the central tribune on the east side of the interior, directly opposite the tomb of his father. Guiseppe Sacconi, architect of the Victor Emanuel Monument, received the commission to design the tomb, for which he resuscitated his design for Vittorio Emanuele’s tomb that had placed second to Manfredi’s. It comprises a large rectangular marble panel flanked by an allegorical figure on each end, all set before a heavily garlanded sculptural backdrop above. Inscribed on the panel is the simple inscription UMBERTO I / RE D’ITALIA. In front, between the two ancient columns of the niche, Sacconi placed a porphyry altar supporting a bronze crown on a marble cushion. Ironically, Sacconi had been on the committee 13 years earlier that had rejected an almost identical altar designed by Manfredi for Vittorio Emanuele’s tomb as being too pagan in character. Apart from Umberto’s widow, Queen Margherita of Savoy, who was interred below her husband’s tomb in 1926, no other Italian monarchs would be laid to rest in the Pantheon. By the time Umberto’s successor, his son Vittorio Emanuele III, died in 1947, Italy had become a republic.

  By 1900, the Pantheon had witnessed more than a half century of struggles to define modern Italy. For Italians, the city of Rome represented the dream of a united peninsula and, through association with the city’s ancient past, the aspiration for rekindled national greatness. Nowhere was this equation more powerfully felt than at the Pantheon. On the occasion of the entombment of Umberto, the antiquarian Ciro Nispi-Landi described the Pantheon as “the ring that reconnects the ancient and modern times, the ancestral art to that of our time, the power of Rome to the nationality of we Italians today.”98 The various attempts to forge this ring on the part of the secular Italian government reflected their larger struggle to acquire political legitimacy, particularly in the face of the ongoing presence of the papacy in Rome. Throughout the various attempted transformations of the Pantheon, the government encountered divergent ideals of preservation, rival claims to ownership, and conflicting patriotic visions, especially concerning how best to commemorate the king. The result, in the end, was a series of generally restrained interventions that defined the building we see today: closer to its ancient appearance than it had been for centuries on the exterior, yet only modestly altered physic
ally on the interior, but typologically enriched by its new symbolic role as a dynastic mausoleum. In the larger scheme of modern Italian politics, the exploitation of the ancient Pantheon and the compromises brokered there between Italian and Vatican authorities closely anticipated the manner in which Mussolini attempted to establish his own authority in Rome after 1925.

  Material for this chapter has been drawn from my Ph.D dissertation, “Rome as State Image: The Architecture and Urbanism of the Royal Italian Government, 1870–1900” (University of Pennsylvania, 1993). My research and ideas were further developed through a pair of conference papers delivered at the annual meetings of the Society of Architectural Historians in 1993 and the College Art Association in 2000. I owe special thanks to my dissertation advisor, David Brownlee, as well as to Lars Berggren, John Pinto, Mark Hewitt, Tod Marder, Greg Willams, and David Gobel for their insightful assistance.

  1 Ferdinand Gregorovius, quoted in Silvio Negro, Seconda Roma: 1850–1870, Rome 1943; repr. Vicenza 1966, p. 30. All translations by the author, unless otherwise indicated.

  2 Pietro Rosa, Sulle scoperte archeologiche della città e provincia di Roma negli anni 1871–72, Rome 1873, p. 1.

  3 Letter, Coppino, Ministro della Pubblica Istruzione, to Mayor of Rome, Aug. 17, 1876, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Direzione Generale di Antichità e Belle Arti, versamento 1, busta 81, fascicolo 109, sotto-fascicolo 14.

  4 Vittorio Emanuele II was the second king in the House of Savoy by that name. With the creation of Italy as a constitutional monarchy, Vittorio Emanuele II became the new country’s first king, but he retained his ordinal number to preserve the continuity of the Savoy dynasty.

  5 From 1861 to 1876, there were 15 different governments in Italy under nine different prime ministers.

  6 “Il Re a Roma” and “La via de’ trionfatori,” L’Opinione, Oct. 24 and 26, 1870.

  7 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton 1957; see especially, “The King Never Dies,” pp. 314–450.

  8 Francesco Lattari, I monumenti dei principi di Savoia in Roma, Rome 1879, p. 321.

  9 Letter, Anzino to Depretis, Feb. 14, 1883, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Ministero del Interno, Gabinetto, Atti Diversi, Ser. 1849–95, busta 8, fascicolo 9.

  10 Renzo U. Montini, Tombe di Sovrani in Roma, Rome 1957, p. 31.

  11 Letter, Anzino to Depretis, Jan. 11, 1878, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Depretis, serie 1, busta 23, fascicolo 83.

  12 Letter, Anzino to Depretis, Feb. 14, 1883, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Ministero del Interno, Gabinetto, Atti Diversi, serie 1849–95, busta 8, fascicolo 9.

  13 Earlier manifestations of the same concept, such as the Temple of English Worthies (1734) at Stowe, did not use the term “pantheon.”

  14 See Pamela Scott, “Robert Mills and American Monuments,” in John M. Bryan, ed., Robert Mills, Architect, Washington, DC 1989, pp. 157–171.

  15 Domenico Mollajoli, Progetto di un Panteon Nazionale italiano Storico-Politico-Artistico, Turin 1862; the “Pantheon” fireworks machine was designed by architect Gioacchino Ersoch and is illustrated in Bruno Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani, Rome 1991, p. 8 (Fig. 1).

  16 Crispi, speeches of Mar. 10 and 17, 1881, Atti Parlamentari, Camera, Discussioni, pp. 4250 and 4457.

  17 William C. Loerke, “Georges Chédanne and the Pantheon: A Beaux Arts Contribution to the History of Roman Architecture,” Modulus: University of Virginia School of Architecture Review 4, 1982, pp. 40–55; p. 41. See here Chapter Two.

  18 “Il Pellegrinaggio nazionale,” L’Illustrazione Italiana, Jan. 13, 1884, p. 22.

  19 L’Illustrazione Italiana, Jan. 27, 1878, p. 50, and Feb. 3, 1878, p. 68.

  20 Letter, Anzino to Depretis, Feb. 14, 1883, ACS, Min.Int, GabAD, Ser.1849–95, b.8, f.9.

  21 “Elenco delle Persone Reali e Personaggi dei seguiti Loro presenti ...,” Jan. 17, 1878, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Real Casa, Ufficio del Prefetto di Palazzo, filza 34, 1878.

  22 Fiorella Bartoccini, Roma nell’Ottocento: Il tramonto della “Città Santa,” nascita di una capital, 2 vols., Istituto Nazionale di Studi Romani, Storia di Roma, Bologna 1985, vol. 2, pp. 484–485.

  23 “Rivista Politica,” L’Illustrazione Italiana, Jan. 27, 1878, p. 50.

  24 No literature exists on royal exequies in nineteenth-century Italy. The organization, timing, and decoration of such events, to judge from those held for Vittorio Emanuele II in the Pantheon, appear entirely consistent with seventeenth-century exequies in the Spanish court, which are discussed at length by Steven N. Orso, Art and Death at the Spanish Hapsburg Court, Columbia, Mo., 1989.

  25 Basilio Magni, Descrizione dell’apparato fatto nel Pantheon, Rome 1878, p. 5, n. 1; see Silvio Negro, Album Romano, Rome 1956.

  26 “L’esequie per Vittorio Emanuele nel Pantheon,” L’Illustrazione Italiana, Mar. 3, 1878, p. 139.

  27 Magni 1878, p. 7.

  28 Letter, Angelo Vecellio to Ministro della Pubblica Istruzione [Baccelli], Nov. 12, 1883, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Direzione Generale di Artichità e Belle Arti, versamento 1, busta 123, fascicolo 174, sotto-fascicolo 3.

  29 Armando Ravaglioli (Roma umbertina, Rome 1984, p. 97) asserts without elaboration or proof that the second funeral was the first time Vittorio Emanuele was defined as Padre della Patria.

  30 Magni 1878, pp. 13–14. To fuel the starry display, architect Antonio Viviani brought in an underground gas line from the Teatro Argentina, more than 300 meters to the south (though it is unknown how these were installed inside the coffers); see letter, Ministro del Interno [Depretis] to Ministro della Pubblica Istruzione [Baccelli], Aug. 5, 1882, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Direzione Generale di Artichità e Belle Arti, Monumenti e Onoranze a Uomini Illustri, busta 10, fascicolo “1878–1894. Roma. Morte di V...E... II ed onoranze anniversarie.”

  31 On this scheme, see Richard Krautheimer, The Rome of Alexander VII, 1655–1667, Princeton 1985, pp. 104–109; and 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.

  32 Copy of letter, Mayor of Rome to Prefetto della Provincia di Roma, undated, enclosed with letter, Prefetto della Provincia di Roma to Ministro della Pubblica Istruzione [Coppino], Feb. 15, 1879, ACS, DGABA, Vers.1, b.119, f.172, sf.19.

  33 Letter, Gori, Arciprete at Pantheon, to Fiorelli, Mar. 8, 1879 [date received], Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Direzione Generale di Antichità e Belle Arti, versamento 1, busta 120, fascicolo 172, sotto-fascicolo 34.

  34 Letter, Gori to Fiorelli, Mar. 8, 1879.

  35 Letter, Fiorelli to Gori, Aug. 18, 1879, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Direzione Generale di Antichità e Belle Arti, versamento 1, busta 120, fascicolo 172, sotto-fascicolo 34.

  36 Auturo Bianchi, “Le vicende e le realizzazioni del piano regolatore di Roma Capitale,” Capitolium 10, 1934, pp. 33–47; p. 37.

  37 Pietro Comparini, Monumento nazionale da erigersi in Roma al re Vittorio Emanuele II: progetto del cav. Pietro Comparini architetto a Firenze, Florence 1881. The author wishes to thank Claudia Conforti and Carla Trovini for clarifying the identity of this architect and bringing to light this source.

  38 Letter, P. Piranesi to French Minister of the Interior, June 24, 1810, quoted in Pierre Pinon, “Piazze e monumenti di Roma,” in Forma, ed. A. Capodiferro, Rome 1985, pp. 48–49; p. 48.

  39 Valadier’s plan is illustrated in Pinon 1985a, p. 48.

  40 Achille Monti, “Il Pantheon di Roma,” Il Buonarroti, November/December 1870, pp. 318–321.

  41 Copy of an undated letter from the Mayor of Rome to the Prefetto della Provincia di Roma, enclosed with letter, Prefetto della Provincia di Roma to the Ministro di Pubblica Istruzione, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Direzione Generale di Antichità e Belle Arti, Versamento 1, busta 119, fascicolo 172, sotto-fascicolo 19.

  42 De l’Isle’s “theory o
f the two cities” was first applied in Rome to Trajan’s Column, in a project designed by Valadier but carried out only after the departure of the French. For a brief discussion of his theory, see Pierre Pinon, “Roma antica e Roma moderna: sovrapporre o giustapporre,” in Forma, ed. A. Capodiferro, Rome 1985, pp. 21–23.

  43 See Giambattista Demora, Il Piano Regolatore di Roma e le antichità classiche, Rome 1882, pp. 71–77.

  44 Boito summarized his ideas on restoration in Camillo Boito, Il nuovo e l’antico in architettura, ed. Maria Antonietta Crippa, Milan 1989, pp. 107–126. See also Alberto M. Racheli, “Restauri a Roma capital. Teorie da Camillo Boito a Gustavo Giovannoni: tra conservazione e innovazione,” in Forma, ed. A. Capodiferro, Rome 1985, pp. 86–90.

  45 Decreto [contratto], Baccelli, Ministro della Pubblica Istruzione, Nov. 9, 1881, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Direzione Generale di Antichità e Belle Arti, Versamento 1, busta 119, fascicolo 172, sotto-fascicolo 37.

  46 Costantino Maes, Il Pantheon: Le espropriazioni e le demolizioni alle Terme di Agrippa, Rome 1881, p. 7.

  47 See “I restauri del Pantheon.” L’Illustrazione Italiana, Apr. 15, 1883, p. 234.