The Domes of Deliverance: Two Roman Architectural Grandeurs in Contrast - Essay Example

The Domes of Deliverance: Two Roman Architectural Grandeurs in Contrast Any achievements in the field of architecture – may it be buildings, bridges, stadiums or mausoleums – are specifically done for its intended purpose. All the time, these masterpieces outlive their builders, their owners and even its original use. For, it becomes the mute witness of an era that was. Frank Lloyd Wright, a famous American architect, once said that architecture is the mother of all arts; “for without architecture of our own, we have no soul of our own civilization”. Truly, the accomplishments of a civilization could be conceived at the grandeur of the buildings they constructed. Inarguably, the ancient Romans built the greatest masterpieces of architecture: their amphitheaters, buildings and mausoleums. The Romans admittedly adopted the existing Greek architecture for their own purposes, from which they improved to fashion new architectural styles. Now known as the ‘classical architecture’, most historians consider the Roman Empire’s style of architecture as one of their most relevant contribution to the modern world. Most of these architectural grandeurs still stand throughout Rome; usually these buildings are characterized by arches and domes and used as governmental and religious purposes. In the interest of having a deeper appreciation of the Roman classical architecture, two most prominent buildings will be compared for our purpose: one classical and the other, post-classical. For the classical, the Pantheon stands out as one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings. It is said to be the oldest important building in the world with its original roof intact and has been in continuous use throughout its history (Wikipedia Encyclopedia). On the other hand, for the post-classical type, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is aptly the most magnificent model. In Norwich’s Great Architecture of the World (1975), St. Peter’s is acclaimed to be as the most magnificent church in Christendom and the fruit of many talents, which soars triumphantly above the Vatican Hill for nearly 150 years. The Pantheon: The Grand Altar of the Gods Originally developed as the divine temple to the seven deities of the seven planets in the Roman state religion, the Pantheon was once pronounced to have the tallest dome in the world until the Cathedral of Florence was constructed in 1436. Pantheon literally means in Greek “to honor all gods” (Kostof, 1985). Under the Roman Republic, the original Pantheon was built in 27-25 BC during the third consulship of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the son-in-law of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Agrippa inscribed his name on the portico of the building. The inscription reads M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIUM·FECIT, "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the third time, built this." It was originally built with adjoining baths and water gardens (Wikipedia Encyclopedia). After Agrippas Pantheon was destroyed by fire in AD 80, it was rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian in 125 AD and was heralded as one of the greatest spiritual buildings of the world. Being built as a Roman temple, it was later consecrated as a Catholic Church since the 7th century AD. Totally reconstructed with the text of the inscription embellishing the new facade, Hadrian retained Agrippa’s common practice in rebuilding projects all over Rome (Clark & Pause, 1985). The building was later repaired by Septimius Severus and Caracalla, with its monumental porch originally faced a rectangular colonnaded temple courtyard and now facades the smaller Piazza della Rotonda (Kostof, 1985). Proclaimed as an architectural wonder, the Roman Pantheon is the largest (43.4m diameter) unreinfored solid concrete dome in the world (Moore, 2004). The Pantheon is no less magnificent and relevant today because it served as basis to create modern architectural types. The Pantheon also goes with the name the Sphinx of the Campus Martius, because in spite of its preservation it remains inexplicable from many points of view. Lanciani (1997) explains that this uncertainty is concerned to the general outline as well as the intricate details of the building. He describes: The rotunda is obviously disjointed from the portico and their architectural lines are not in harmony with each other. On the other hand, it is evident that the Pantheon seen by Pliny the elder, in Vespasians time, was not the one which has come down to us, because there is no place in the present building for the Caryatides of Diogenes the Athenian, and for the capitals of Syracusan bronze which he saw and described as crowning the columns of the temple (Lanciani, 1997). More significant than the inception of the Pantheon are the building materials it was made of. Crucially positioned in the business district of Rome, much as it was built some 18 centuries ago, the ancient knowledge lacks the technology of modern architecture. Nearly lost with the fall of the Roman Empire and the fires that struck in of 60, 64, 79, 100 and 110 A.D., it has amazingly withstood the ravages of both the elements and war permitting a firsthand view of a unique product constructed by Roman hands: Unrecognized, the design of this ancient concrete building reveals unparalleled features not encountered in modern design standards. Recent studies reveal several major cracks in the dome, but it still functions unimpaired. This condition will surely excite the curiosity of our structural engineers. The building was built entirely without steel reinforcing rods to resist tensile cracking, so necessary in concrete members, and for this concrete dome with a long span to last centuries is incredible. Today, no engineer would dare build this structure without steel rods! Modern codes of engineering practice would not permit such mischief. No investor with knowledge of concrete design would provide the funding. Additional constraints when attempting to build a structure as large as the Pantheon include the use of inadequate hand tools and unsafe lifting devices (Moore, 1995). Structural Description Seen as a large round shape very much like a large barrel with a dome covering the top, the Pantheon definitely makes a visual spectacle. There is a light-well in the center of the dome called an oculus. The round walls are adorned with layers of beautiful thin brickwork as covers from the outside. Small access holes appear occasionally in the wall, which were used during construction to frame interior voids. The main entrance is a double bronze doors 21 feet high (6.4 meters), a lasting and fitting contribution from their metal smiths (McDonald, 1976). These doors are protected by a high, broad porch, made with 16 well arranged granite columns supporting a gable styled roof. The beams in the roof structure of the porch are wooden. The portico consists of three rows of eight columns, 14 m (46 feet) high of Egyptian granite with Corinthian capitals. They support an entablature facing the square, which bears the famous inscription in Latin, attributing the construction to Agrippa. The dome has a span of 43.2 m (142 feet), the largest dome until Brunelleschis dome at the Florence Cathedral of 1420-36 (Norwich, 1975). The Pantheon still has the longest span constructed before the 19th Century. The rotunda has a rather awesome inner diameter of 142.4 feet (43.4 m), made mostly of concrete. The distance it represents is comparable to about one half the length of our football field. And from the floor to the top of the opening in the dome is the same distance (Licht, 1968). St. Peter’s Basilica: The Palace of Pontiffs At the heart of Vatican City, St. Peters Basilica is an example of a post-classical structure that brings in Christian pilgrims from all over the world. As an intricately decorated basilica beneath a vast dome designed by the great artist Michelangelo, a shrine was erected on the site of St. Peters tomb in the 2nd century. St. Peter’s is the first great basilica, ordered by the Emperor Constantine, was completed around AD 349. The Basilica of Saint Peter, officially known in Italian as the Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano, fell down in the 15th century. In 1506, Pope Julius II laid the first stone of a new church and took more than a century to build, with all the great architects of the Roman Renaissance and Baroque had a hand in its design (Wikipedia Website). Contracting Gian Lorenzo Bernini to continue the work, Urban VIII had ordered the restructuring of the façade. Then, after falling from favor under Innocent X, he was brought back by Alexander VII (1655-67) to design the new square in front of the basilica. Madernos façade needed to be given greater breadth; the irregular buildings surrounding the square in 1586 had to be hidden; the obelisk set up in the square in 1586 had to be taken into account; and it was also necessary to enable a larger crowd to see the Pope during the “Urbi et Orbi” blessing (Activitaly Rome Website). Berninis solution was to design a piazza in the form of an ellipse, bordered by a quadruple colonnade forming a portico wide enough to let a carriage pass. The foci of the area is indicated by marble disk on each side of the two fountains. Two wings link the colonnades to the basilica: the one on the right end at the Scala Regia, the one on the left at the Arco delle Campane. The balustrade above the columns is decorated with 140 statues of Saints. Below it, there’s a huge stairway of three flights flanked by the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The Dome Often used synonymously with cupola in architecture, a dome signifies the external part of a spherical or polygonal covering of a building, of which the cupola (q.v.) is the inner structure. In general usage dome means the entire covering. A dome may be of any material, wood, stone, metal, earthenware, or it may be built of a single mass or of a double or even triple series of concentric coverings. The dome is a roof, the base of which is a circle, an ellipsis, or a polygon, and its vertical section a curved line, concave towards the interior (Poole, 2003). Designed by Michelangelo, who became chief architect in 1546, St. Peter’s dome was finished as a double dome is brick, 42.3 m in interior diameter (almost as large as the Pantheon), rising to 120 m above the floor. In the early 18th century cracks appeared in the dome, so four iron chains were installed between the two shells to bind it, like the rings that keep a barrel from bursting (Wikipedia Website). Historically, the Roman dome was a hemisphere supported by a circular wall. Its finest example was the Pantheon, Rome. Viollet-le-Duc in writing of the dome of the Pantheon says, "This majestic cupola is the widest, the most beautiful, the best constructed, and most stable of all the great domes of the world". Previous to the building of the Pantheon in its present domical form, the history of the dome was still virtually unknown (Poole, 2003). During the Italian Renaissance, domed construction became a fad, possibly on account of its classical precedent, and it seems the Pantheon the starting-point of a new development, which culminated in the domes of St. Peters Basilica in Rome and St. Pauls in London. The substructure of the dome of St. Peters is a round drum, which serves as a stylobate and lifts it above the surrounding roofs. On this stands the ringwall of the drum, decorated with a Corinthian order and carrying an attic; on this sits the oval mass of the noblest dome in the world. However, Guralnick in 1991 criticized the dome of St Peter’s as ‘bad engineering.’ Built in the 16th century by Michelangelo, certainly he had every opportunity to study the nearby Pantheon. Yet, neither he nor his associates made a thorough examination of the Pantheon when designing St. Peters dome: The design was clumsy, enormously wasteful, and not very durable. It has been substantially rebuilt three times during its 400 year life. In short, the dome of St. Peters Cathedral represents bad engineering, primarily because it did not take advantage of information about dome construction easily obtained from a careful study of the nearby Pantheon. The engineering that went into the design and construction of St. Peterss Dome was not state-of-the-art (Guralnick, 1991). The Pantheon Vs St. Peter’s Basilica As the best preserved example of monumental Roman architecture, the Pantheon was enormously influential on European and American architects from the Renaissance to the 19th century. Numerous city halls, universities and public libraries echo its portico-and-dome structure. Examples of notable buildings influenced by the Pantheon include Thomas Jeffersons Rotunda at the University of Virginia, Low Library at Columbia University, New York, and the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia (Wikipedia Website). However, some changes have been made in the interior decoration, like the fine marble has been removed in the course of the centuries, and there are capitals from some of the pilasters in the British Museum. In the case of St. Peter’s Basilica, Michelangelos dome is not a hemisphere, but a paraboloid: it has a vertical thrust, which is made more emphatic by the bold ribbing that springs from the paired Corinthian columns. The egg-shaped dome exerts less outward thrust than a lower hemispheric one, as the dome conceived by Donato Bramante at the outset in 1503. It was planned to be carried out with a single masonry shell, a plan that was discovered not to be feasible. San Gallo came up with the double shell, and Michelangelo improved on it. Other domes around the world built since, are always compared to this St. Peter’s like: Saint Josephs Oratory in Montreal, Quebec, St Pauls Cathedral in London, Les Invalides in Paris, United States Capitol in Washington, DC, Harrisburg, PA, and the more literal reproduction at the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, Cote dIvoire (Wikipedia Website). Conclusion Molded by extensive borrowing from the Etruscan models and then from Greek styles, the Roman architecture had undergone creative adaptations, along with regional and local influences made for a diversity of artistic styles as did the tastes and preferences of individual artists and patrons. In the emergence of new inventions, designs and innovations, the Romans further enriched their artistic vocabulary and provided a sight for the whole world to behold. Rome bestowed a distinctive artistic heritage, not only in the field of architecture and design, but also to the whole mankind as well. The early Romans tried to merge their own knowledge with other traditions, in order to be re-used, adapted and imitated in response to new requirements for the advancement of our civilization. The Pantheon and St. Peter’s Basilica are just two classic contributions of Roman architecture to our present time. These buildings may not be as perfect and may have undergone innumerable repairs and re-modeling, but these are magnificent reminders of how advanced the Roman civilization was. Thousands of years may have passed, but we still envisage the grandeur of their art and their time – through these buildings. Works Cited Clark, R. H. and Pause, M. Precedents In Architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985. David Moore, P.E. The Roman Pantheon: The Triumph of Concrete. Wyoming: Pinedale, 1995. Guralnick, N. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: A Structural Engineer on Design Solutions." Perspectives on the Professions, Vol. 10: 2, January 1991. Kostof, S. A History of Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Licht, K.D. The Rotunda in Rome. Jutland Archeological Society Publisher, Copenhagen, 1968, McDonald, W. L. The Pantheon. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1976, p. 37 Norwich, J. J. (ed). Great Architecture of the World. New York: Random House, 1975. p 153. Olding, P. Rocks of ages. Geographical, Vol. 77:3, March, 2005, p 64-69. St. Peter’s Basilica. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia Website. Acquired online 5 Sept. 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica The Pantheon. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia Website. Acquired online 5 Sept. 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome Read More