Reassessing the Pantheon in Rome

Reassessing the Pantheon in Rome
Speaker: Rabun Taylor

The Pantheon in Rome has a far more interesting and complex building and design history than we give it credit for. Admired as a creation of almost mystical perfection, it is in reality full of interesting quirks and compromises. We know very little about the Pantheon’s history from independent sources (indeed, even its attested attribution to the emperor Hadrian is now being seriously challenged), so we must rely on the building itself to document its own past. The lecture discusses the results of an informal survey of the building’s eight-column-wide porch. This overlies the remains of a wider, ten-column porch, whose date and attribution remain very much in question. The existing pediment is full of rarely noticed eccentricities; they suggest not only unusual haste in the building’s completion, but the evident use of ill-matching components, some of which may have been intended for the abandoned (?) larger porch. Many of these eccentricities can be confirmed by a recent digital laser survey of the building undertaken by the Karman Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Bern. The Bern project offers a new tool for close analysis of the building, particularly those parts that cannot be reached physically without scaffolding.

Professor Rabun Taylor is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Minnesota, and has held the Ryskamp Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Sabbatical Fellowship of the American Philosophical Society. His specialization is in Roman art, architecture and urbanism, and the culture of ancient Italy. He is the author of Roman Builders: A Study in Architectural Process and The Moral Mirror of Ancient Art. He has been an active member of the AIA, including holding various offices with the Boston Society.

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