Marble pilaster capitals from the Pantheon in Rome
From the Pantheon in Rome, Italy
AD 118-128
These marble capitals come from the interior
of the Pantheon, one of the most iconic buildings of ancient Rome.
They were originally located at the top of shafts of porphyry – a
rare and expensive stone – and decorated the upper area of the
round Pantheon, beneath the dome. The walls, and the floor beneath,
were covered in colourful marbles and other precious stones.
Literally, a ‘temple to all the gods’, the
Pantheon served a number of functions. It appears to have been used
for the veneration of emperors and Hadrian is known to have held
court there. Its dome is a triumph of Roman engineering. Some of
the materials used for its decoration were of staggering richness
and were drawn from distant parts of the empire to demonstrate the
reach and power of Rome.
Hadrian rebuilt the Pantheon in around AD 125
after a series of fires had destroyed both the original building,
first erected by Marcus Agrippa, and the building that had replaced
it.
The capitals were removed during a redesign of
the Pantheon’s interior in AD 1747. The redesign was an attempt to
correct the lack of vertical alignment between the various elements
of the rotunda’s wall and ceiling decoration. While the original
layout had puzzled architects from the Renaissance onwards, it is
now seen as an ingenious way of adding vibrancy and movement to
what would otherwise have been a rigidly symmetrical design.