Week 6 – The arrival of autumn, and appreciating the Pantheon

The last lingering late-summer-like days ended abruptly this week.  This past Monday morning, one of the Fellows here and her companion took a short train ride for one last quick swim in the ocean before the weather turned too cold.  Back that afternoon, they told us the beach was glorious and sunny that morning just an hour or so from Rome.  Their timing couldn’t have been better – just a couple hours later that same day, the weather changed suddenly and forcefully.  I sat in my studio working at my desk at about 5:30 PM, while my 4 month old daughter lay in her stroller next to me gazing out the window at the tall umbrella pines.   Suddenly my studio and the skies outside grew dark, fierce chilly winds began to howl, and the umbrella pines began to bend and sway against the backdrop of an almost black sky.   It was like a frightening scene out of the Wizard of Oz.  I immediately moved my daughter away from the window, glancing back over my shoulder as I did so, half expecting to see flying monkeys silhouetted against the dark sky.  The temperature felt like it dropped about 10 degrees F in a matter of a minutes. The winds had shifted and now blow out of the north, bringing a rush of cold air with them.  Last week the highs were in the low 80’s F, but by  Thursday and Friday of this week the low temps were in the 30’s F – not cold compared to my native Boston (where it is snowing as I write this)- but certainly no longer late-summer-like days in Rome.  Autumn has decidedly arrived.

The long shadows of autumn fall across the Bass Garden, as the McKim Mead & White Building catches the day's last rays of sun

The meals here at the Academy have also turned the corner to autumn –we still have fresh local greens on the table, but we also see more roasted root vegetables, more hearty soups with barley or beans, and the luscious local peaches we saw as dessert in late summer are no more, replaced with local pears and apples.  The spouse of a visiting artist sits in the Academy’s café, this afternoon, helping the kitchen staff by shelling chestnuts for a dish at this evening’s dinner.

At lunch this Friday, I happened to sit with Linda Duke, a colleague from the Indianapolis Museum of Art who has asked us all to describe an artistic or aesthetic experience that moves us, that she could record for her project which involves education in the arts.    After lunch, I sat with Linda for a few moments to just talk off-the-cuff about an aesthetic experience that I find moving.   I talked to her about the Pantheon.  I’ll try to recap some of it here.

Pantheon in Rome - split elevation (L) and section (R)

My colleague Richard Wittman (an architectural historian) and I have both confessed to being literally unable to walk past the Pantheon without going inside. I admire the Pantheon from so many different perspectives that it’s difficult to know where to begin.   Since my Rome project relates to durability in construction, I might as well begin there – it should go without saying that I can’t help but admire a building that’s still remarkably intact after about 1,900 years of service.  And as an engineer, I admire its incredible technical accomplishment – the largest dome in the world from it’s completion in 126 A.D. until 1881 – the thoughtful engineering and construction behind the outer step rings, the tapering thickness of the dome, the coffering, and the carefully considered variation from heavy to lighter aggregate, all serving to put the material where it is most needed structurally, and lighten the structure where it is not, and to gradually lighten the dome as it proceeds upward.    But to me what really makes the Pantheon, (and similarly the late Gothic Cathedrals of northern France) truly extraordinary is the complete synthesis of the technical, artistic, and purely emotional/spiritual accomplishment.  The technical/structural bravado wasn’t simply to solve a problem, nor to create something larger or more challenging than had been built before.   Nor was the artistic expression conceived in the abstract, devoid of an understanding of structure and materials.   Rather, the work is a remarkably integrated whole, and the technical ingenuity and use of materials are not only logical and elegant, but were also instrumental and necessary to realize a remarkable artistic vision, and create a profound  spatial and even emotional experience for those who enter this temple.   

As a temple, the Pantheon should be and is a place that transcends our mundane everyday lives.  It both represents a more divine, perfect world, and it uplifts the human spirit and emotions of almost anyone who enters to convey at least some sense of something greater, more divine, more noble, that transcends our earthly world and everyday lives.  As countless have observed, the interior circumscribes a perfect sphere to complete the hemisphere of the dome, with the tip of the implied sphere just touching the center of the floor.  It’s almost as if that spot at the center of the floor, to which so many feel drawn, is where our earthly world just barely touches the divine heavens above.  While it was a remarkable artistic and technical achievement of its own time, it speaks not merely of its own moment in time, but of timelessness and eternity.  

Pantheon section drawing (Andrea Palladio 1570)

Approaching the Pantheon from its front, the exterior of the dome is not highly visible (in contrast to most domes of any architectural era).  Unlike almost all other major domes, it is not intended as a beacon on the horizon – in fact, exactly the opposite.  The shallow slope of the exterior surface, and the high walls of the façade serve to minimize the visibility of the dome from the exterior.   In looking at the section drawing, one can see that the dome does not begin at the top of the exterior walls – rather, the exterior walls extend above the springline (lowermost edge) of the dome, further concealing and minimizing the visibility of the dome from the exterior.    Thus, even today, the dome is scarcely visible from the center of the piazza in front of the Pantheon.  All this is part of a very careful architectural manipulation of the approach to, and consequent spatial experience of, the interior of the Pantheon.

The portico of the Pantheon was originally intended to be about 10 feet higher, but the design was adjusted during construction out of necessity to accommodate shorter columns (as described by Mark Wilson-Jones).

Despite not realizing the intended taller portico, in ancient Rome in the first century, the dome (and even the rounded exterior walls of the drum that would hint at a dome) still would have been far less visible from the exterior than today, as:

• other surrounding buildings were much closer to the sides and rear of the Pantheon, and
• the ground outside was about 30 feet below its present level – which created more acute-angled views upward, and further enhanced the ability of the walls and cornice of the Pantheon to conceal the dome from view.

Thus, with the dome and the rounded drum cleverly concealed from the exterior, many in ancient Rome would have had the spatial and emotional experience of entering into the largest dome and interior space in the ancient world as a complete surprise. 

Pantheon exterior view from front

Imagine the sequence and approach into the Pantheon in the first century A.D. – you travel through crowded narrow streets, and finally come to the open area in front of a large temple.  You gaze upward at the portico front of a temple – and although it is particularly tall, it basically resembles dozens of other temples in Rome that you’ve seen and entered, and hundreds more around the vast Roman empire.  Been there, done that you night think – perhaps you were expecting something different and greater for a temple to ALL of the Gods in the heart of Rome.   

Pantheon - interior view of dome -18 October '09

However, when you walk across the portico and through the massive bronze doors, you are surprised to find yourself in an impossibly large space, a giant sphere 150 Roman feet in diameter that envelops you beneath the largest dome in existence.  The dome, a perfect hemisphere, represents the heavens above, and the only source of light other than the doorway through which you entered is a giant oculus in the crown of the massive dome above.  In contrast with a sundial, which tracks the movement of time by the movement of a shadow cast across a surface, the interior of the Pantheon is like a reverse sundial – the movement of a circle of light, rather than a tip of a shadow, across the interior surface of the hemisphere (the figurative heavens above), tracks not the time of this moment on this earthly world, but timelessness and eternity.