The Pantheon From Antiquity to the Present

The Pantheon is one of the most important architectural monuments of all time. Thought to have been built by Emperor Hadrian in approximately AD 125 on the site of an earlier, Agrippan-era monument, it brilliantly displays the spatial pyrotechnics emblematic of Roman architecture and engineering. The Pantheon gives an up-to-date account of recent research on the best preserved building in the corpus of ancient Roman architecture from the time of its construction to the twenty-first century. Each chapter addresses a specific fundamental issue or period pertaining to the building; together, the essays in this volume shed light on all aspects of the Pantheon's creation, and establish the importance of the history of the building to an understanding of its ancient fabric and heritage, its present state, and its special role in the survival and evolution of ancient architecture in modern Rome.

1. Introduction Tod A. Marder and Mark Wilson Jones; 2. Agrippa's Pantheon and its origin Eugenio La Rocca; 3. Dating the Pantheon Lise M. Hetland; 4. The conception and construction of drum and dome Giangiacomo Martines; 5. Sources and parallels for the design and construction of the Pantheon Gene Waddell; 6. The Pantheon builders: estimating manpower for construction Janet DeLaine; 7. Building on adversity: the Pantheon and problems with its construction Mark Wilson Jones; 8. The Pantheon in the middle ages Erik Thunø; 9. Impressions of the Pantheon in the Renaissance Arnold Nesselrath; 10. The Pantheon in the seventeenth century Tod A. Marder; 11. Neo-classical remodelling and reconception 1700–1820 Susanna Pasquali; 12. A nineteenth-century monument for the state Robin B. Williams; 13. The Pantheon in the modern age Richard Etlin.

This book treats the Pantheon from the unique perspective of its construction history, survival, and reception through history. Each chapter is a self-standing investigation of a particular architectural aspect of the building or a historical period during its survival to explain how the Pantheon has been understood over the centuries, why it looks as it does today, and why it has endured as an architectural model.

Tod A. Marder is professor of art history at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He has lectured and published widely on the Pantheon, the art and architecture of Bernini, and many related topics. His work has earned fellowship support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Philosophical Society, among others. He is the author of Bernini and the Art of Architecture (1998), which received the thirty-fifth Daria Borghese Prize for best book on a Roman topic by a non-Italian author.
Mark Wilson Jones is senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Bath. His research concentrates on ancient architecture and its design, along with the ramifications for developments since the Renaissance. He is the author of Principles of Roman Architecture (2000), the first book to be awarded both the Banister Fletcher Prize and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Prize.