A Portal to the Heavens

[Pages:4]The Pantheon | A Portal to the Heavens | Masterpiece by Eric Gibson - WS... ...

News, Quotes, Companies, Videos SEARCH

Friday, July 20, 2012 As of 8:11 PM New York 84? | 71?

MASTERPIECE

Welcome, David Jaeger Logout

Customer Center My Journal Help

U.S. Edition Home

Today's Paper People In The News Video Blogs Journal Community

NEW CIO Journal Access NOW ?

World U.S. New York Business Markets Tech Personal Finance Life & Culture Opinion Careers Real Estate

Small Business

Arts & Entertainment Cars Books & Ideas Fashion Food & Drink Olympics Sports Travel Health WSJ. Magazine Off Duty The A-Hed

TOP STORIES IN

Life & Culture

1 of 12

When the Wife Earns More

2 of 12

A Cheat Sheet on the Budget

3 of 12

Why We Can Eat Meat

MASTERPIECE

July 20, 2012, 8:11 p.m. ET

MASTERPIECE: THE PANTHEON

A Portal to the Heavens

Article

Comments (9)

MORE IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ?

By ERIC GIBSON

Visitors to Rome overwhelmed by all it has to offer--"the abundance of its pasts" in the words of the poet Rilke--can find relief with a stop at the Pantheon. Embodying the city's pagan and Christian identities, the Pantheon is Rome in microcosm.

Built in the second century by the Emperor Hadrian as a temple to all the Roman gods, it is the only major work of Roman Imperial architecture still intact. It owes its survival to having been consecrated a Christian church (Santa Maria ad Martyres) in the seventh century, which placed it under papal protection.

The architect? Candidates range from Anonymous to Apollodorus of Damascus, designer of Trajan's Column. Whoever he was, he created a work of soaring beauty that epitomizes the Roman revolution in architecture.

Vanni / Art Resource, NY

THE PANTHEON'S DOME: Five thousand tons of concrete and the sun.

Seen from its north-facing front, the concrete-and-brick Pantheon consists of a pedimented entrance porch, a domed rotunda and a boxlike intermediate structure joining them. Their forms-- triangle, hemisphere and rectangle --announce the underlying theme of pure geometry.

Inside, rising from a circle-and-square-patterned floor, the hemispherical coffered dome rests on a drum. The drum's bottom level is ringed with tabernacles alternating with recessed spaces screened with columns, its upper one with blind windows and framed marble panels.

But it is what's overhead that draws the gasps: the largest masonry dome ever built--142 feet in diameter and weighing five thousand tons--it is the paterfamilias of every structure like it erected since. At the top is one of the most famous features in architecture, the oculus. It focuses a circle of light into the Pantheon that, tracking the transit of the sun, passes slowly across the interior surfaces as the day progresses. This moving disc--glowing, silent, inexorable--transforms the Pantheon from bricksand-mortar house of worship into an almost living thing.

Understandably, given its scale and spread, discussions of the Pantheon have tended to

Don't Miss...

Powered by Taboola

The Best Way to

Lose Weight 02:27

Say Goodbye to

First-Class on U.S.

Airlin es 04:27

Residents of Aurora, Colo. Hold a Prayer Vigil Following ... 01:23

Most Popular

Read Emailed Video

Commented

1. London Olympic Park, 2030

2. Survivors Speak, Victims Named In Aurora Shooting 3. Say Goodbye to First-Class on U.S. Airlines 4. How Inflammation Can Ravage the Body 5. A Look at Marissa Mayer's First Yahoo Memo

Most Read Articles Feed

1 of 4

7/22/2012 1:16 PM

The Pantheon | A Portal to the Heavens | Masterpiece by Eric Gibson - WS... ...

focus on engineering--what it took to erect it and keep it standing. To minimize its weight, the dome thins as it rises, starting at about 20 feet thick at the bottom and tapering to only about four feet at the oculus. Lighter aggregates were mixed with the cement as the dome rose.

The 28 radiating lines of coffers help, too. There has been much speculation over whether there is any symbolic significance to their number. That seems unlikely. The dome was the most critical part of the enterprise--one mistake and you've got rubble--so structural rather than numerological considerations surely drove their design.

If this hunch is correct, some formidable calculations would have been required. The architect would first have had to determine by what cubic footage the mass of the dome needed to be reduced; then figure out the size, shape and number of voids necessary to meet that requirement; finally, arrange them in a way that was uniform, well-ordered and pleasing to the eye. His task makes the creative feats of today's architects, with their CAD (computer-aided design) programs, seem a tad anticlimactic.

ING DIRECT Investing Buy Stocks for $4 - No Minimums. $50 Account Bonus. Learn More! ingdirect

Work from Home - $476/Day Legit Income. Weekly Payments. As Seen on CNN, Fox, MSNBC : sixfigureprogram-

Business Services Find Business Services In Your Area With !

Inside, the dome springs from midway between floor and oculus. Outside, the springing point is significantly higher, the rotunda having been extended upward to buttress the dome. Two levels of heavy vaults concealed inside the rotunda walls transfer the dome's thrust down onto eight massive supporting piers.

Herein lies the essence of the Roman revolution in architecture. A Greek temple is structurally transparent, each element--column, capital, entablature--is visible and its role in forming and supporting the whole self-evident. But the Romans' epic architectural ambitions demanded new and more complex methods of construction. So we see the onset of a kind of illusionism, where the architectural effects and the means used to realize them travel separate paths. Today such sleights of hand are all around us in the modern skyscraper's glass-curtain wall.

But the Pantheon is about more than engineering. It is about space--architectural space as a conduit to spiritual space.

The Pantheon is the greatest interior in Western architecture, one where space is nearly as palpable as the forms that contain it--what isn't there is as important as what is. This effect derives in part from the perfection of its proportions. As William L. MacDonald writes in his 1976 book on the building (still the indispensable guide to the subject), the Pantheon is a sphere within a cube. Continue the curvature of the dome downward, and you get an orb whose bottommost surface kisses the floor. Then raise four vertical planes at the cardinal points of the rotunda, capping them with a horizontal one brushing the oculus, and, with the floor, they'll give you a container cube for the sphere.

It is also a function of the way voids, rather than, as is customary, masses, are used to articulate and embellish the interior. The tabernacles are the only projections; everything else recedes: the column-screened recessions between them, above those the blind windows, above those the coffers, and topping them all the ultimate void--the oculus.

Because of the vertical alignment of these elements, the eye is naturally drawn upward, and as it moves, we notice that the forms become simpler, more elemental. We trace a passage that gradually removes us from the specific, worldly realm below to the most abstract, universal shape of all. The oculus is many things. It is the Pantheon's basic design module. It is an act of consummate architectural audacity. Most of all, however, it is a portal to the heavens.

The round disc of sunlight it admits draws our thoughts out and away from our immediate surroundings to the motion of the planets, and invites us to think of ourselves not as members of a particular faith, city or country, but as part of the whole cosmos.

--Mr. Gibson is the Journal's Leisure & Arts features editor.

A version of this article appeared July 21, 2012, on page C13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Portal to the Heavens.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

9 Comments, add yours

MORE IN

Arts & Entertainment ?

2 of 4

7/22/2012 1:16 PM

The Pantheon | A Portal to the Heavens | Masterpiece by Eric Gibson - WS... ...

Mortgage Rates Hit 2.50% If you owe under $729k you may qualify for 2.90% APR Govt Refi Plans.

2009 Grants for Business Get Grants For Your Business Apply Now, 1000's of Applications Offered

Penny stocks soaring 900% Come experience penny stock gains with our free & accurate newsletter

Buy Stocks for $4 No Account or Investment Minimums. ING DIRECT Investing - $50 Bonus. ingdirect

You Might Like

American Kids: The Most Indulged Young People Ever

Don't Hate Her for Being Fit

A Long Journey Home

Historic Remake: A Tudor to Love and Labor Over

Byron Wien: On Wall Street, They Call Him an Optimist

From Around the Web

Content from Sponsors What's this?

Thomas Edison Did Not Invent The Lightbulb (and Other Things You Should Know) (Qualcomm Spark)

The Five Year Rule for Buying a House

()

4 Things No Woman Should Ever Forgive

(MyDailyMoment)

9 Must Have Status Symbols that Say "I'm Rich" (The Fiscal Times)

Icy Infrared Photographs of Kiev (Bangstyle)

Add a Comment

View All Comments (9)

JOURNAL COMMUNITY Community rules

All comments will display your real name. Start typing your comments here...

Track replies to my comment

CLEAR

POST

OFFERS

Login with Facebook Advertisement

B Nutritious

Up to 67% Off Nutrition Counseling and More

`The Intouchables' Exclusive Screening

Free Tickets to Film Screening on July 25

Windsor Custom

Up to 50% Off Custom Shirts, Suits and Sports Coats

VIEW OFFER ?

VIEW OFFER ?

VIEW OFFER ?

New York

Other Cities: Chicago LA More ?

WSJ Select is operated independently of The Wall Street Journal news department.

Editors' Picks

3 of 4

7/22/2012 1:16 PM

The Pantheon | A Portal to the Heavens | Masterpiece by Eric Gibson - WS... ...

Cycling Event Puts Riders on Iowa Culinary Crusade

Customers Will Be in Control

London's Olympic Bet on Urban Revival

Don't Blame Shorter Lives on Sitting

The Country Court of a Real-Estate King

Customer Center: My Account My Subscriptions

Create an Account: Register for Limited Access Subscribe to Subscribe to WSJ Weekend Print Edition

Help & Information Center: Help Customer Service Contact Us Global Support Print Subscriber Services

About: Content Partnerships Reprints Advertising Place a Classified Ad Classifieds Advertise Locally Conferences About Dow Jones Privacy Policy - UPDATED 10/18/2011 Data Policy - NEW Your Ad Choices Subscriber Agreement & Terms of Use - NEW Copyright Policy Jobs at

: Site Map Home World U.S. New York Business Markets Market Data Tech Personal Finance Life & Culture Opinion Autos Careers Real Estate Small Business Student Journal Corrections SafeHouse - Send Us Information

Copyright ?2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Tools & Formats: Today's Paper Video Center Graphics Columns Blogs Topics Guides Alerts Newsletters Mobile WSJ Social Tablet Edition Podcasts RSS Feeds Journal Community WSJ on Twitter WSJ on Facebook WSJ on Foursquare WSJ on Google+ My Journal Portfolio E-books

BACK TO TOP

Digital Network FINS: Finance, IT jobs, Sales jobs Virtual Stock Exchange WSJ Radio Professor Journal WSJ U.S. Edition WSJ Asia Edition WSJ Europe Edition WSJ India Page Foreign Language Editions: WSJ Chinese WSJ Japanese WSJ Portuguese WSJ Spanish WSJ Deutschland

4 of 4

7/22/2012 1:16 PM

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download