The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present

Description

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.

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.

'The contributors provide a valuable synthesis of recent research on the Pantheon, the paradigm of Roman architectural and engineering prowess. They also identify new and productive directions for subsequent research on the ancient edifice and on its extended legacy.' John Pinto, Princeton University, New Jersey 'For two thousand years, the Pantheon has stood watch in the center of Rome, a marvel of engineering and an unfailingly mysterious symbol. Both the marvel and the mystery shine forth from this definitive book, with its impeccable scholarship, new ideas, and long international perspective.' Ingrid Rowland, University of Notre Dame, Indiana 'Focused on the Pantheon, arguably the most iconic building of western architecture, this magisterial volume brings together a distinguished group of international scholars who tell a gripping story. New answers to unsolved questions of who built it and why, how, and when succeed each other and connect to lively accounts of the fascination it held for countless generations from the early Middle Ages to modern times.' Alina Payne, Harvard University, Massachusetts