The Pantheon

Interior View of the Pantheon, 1734, Giovanni Panini.
It must have taken a brave draughtsman to tackle a round interior with a
coffered dome on a rectangular canvas before the age of photography.

For the college undergrad taking his or her first timid steps into art history or art appreciation, the effect is like opening a book titled: The History of the World (the Untold Story). I'm quite familiar with this feeling, from both sides of the lectern. Not only that, but each chronological chapter is somewhat redundant--the history of painting, the history of sculpture, the history of music, literature, drama, architecture--the list seems endless (though it really isn't). There is some degree of parallelism, of course, but each medium of creative expression has its own cast of characters, timeline, and list of masterpieces, all of which tread dangerously close to the realm of Alex Trebec and Jeopardy trivia. Artists in each area of creative expertise, if they are to attempt greatness, must know and understand the past as related to their own art, but also have some working familiarity with that of their close art relatives.

Only in an aerial view can one gain
some feeling for the immense size and
engineering prowess required in erecting
 a structure that has survived virtually
intact for some 2,000 years.
 

For example, in taking my first art appreciation course as a college freshman, the Ohio University College of Fine Arts very wisely put together a course called "Comparative Arts" in which painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, and drama were all studied side by side. The first three interested me intensely...the others, not so much. Still there was the confusion regarding Manet and Monet, Bellini and Bernini, Pietro Lorenzetti and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and finally the Parthenon and the Pantheon. I think the reason Art Appreciation 101 students find the the two architectural landmarks so confusing, other than the names, is that they were both ancient temples and both represent the high water mark of the cultures which built them.

A cross section of the Pantheon gives some indication as to why the building has survived
floods, fires, wars, earthquakes, not to mention the invading hoards (of tourists).

The name, Pantheon, simply means all gods. Some sort of Pantheon temple was built on the present structure's site as early as 27-25 BCE. However, in 80 AD it burned to the ground (the gods must have been displeased). The emperor Hadrian is said to have designed the present structure in its place though building apparently didn't get underway until around 125 AD. The new and improved Pantheon was much larger than the first, which was rectangular and about the size of the new Pantheon's front porch. Hadrian's Pantheon functioned as a pagan temple for two centuries with statues of the various gods filling the niches around its circular perimeter. The distinctive 27-foot hole in the center of the dome (called an occulus) not only served to admit light but to allow smoke to escape from burnt offerings on an altar centered under the daringly flat concrete dome.

The Pantheon is notoriously hard to photograph at street level due to its being hemmed
in on all sides by modern day buildings and Rome's horriffic vehicular traffic.

After the year 346, when pagan worship in Rome was banned, the Pantheon fell into disuse until 602 when the Byzantine emperor Phocas gave it to Pope Boniface IV for use as a Christian church (a not uncommon practice at the time) dedicated to the Virgin Mary and all Christian martyrs, thus continuing its pantheonic tradition. Though some 1500 years older, the Pantheon rivals St. Peters Basilica across the Tiber in size and scope, its non-reinforced concrete dome soaring some 142 feet above the floor, which non-coincidentally is the exact diameter of the rotunda. Hadrian (or his architects) knew their geometry. The outside walls of the rotunda rise exactly half the height of the dome. Originally, that dome was covered with gold-plated bronze and must have been quite spectacular. However, bronze, not to mention the gold, were much to valuable to have survived the millennia. A Byzantine emperor "stoled the gold" in 663 A.D. while Giovanni Bernini confiscated the bronze to melt down in fabricating the giant Baldacchino hovering over the high altar under Michelangelo's much taller St. Peter's dome.



Unlike the Parthenon and Notre Dame de Paris, the Pantheon is downright ugly from
the rear, owing in large part to its having been merely the centerpiece to a much
larger temple complex in Roman times.

Touring the Pantheon by boat.

It's hard to overstate the influence Hadrian's revolutionary concrete cylinder with a dome and a front porch has had on architects down through the ages. Andrea Palladio had his Villa Rotunda while Thomas Jefferson had his Monticello and more noticeably his design of the library at the University of Virginia. Stanford White was, in turn, influenced by Jefferson's library in designing the Gould Memorial Library in the Bronx, to name only a few. In referring to the Pantheon earlier as the high water mark of Roman architecture (high water literally being a problem in the lowland area near the Tiber where it's located, left), some might argue that the somewhat younger Roman Coliseum deserves this designation. I might agree, if the Coliseum had featured a dome.



Jefferson's Pantheon, University of Virginia,
Charlottsville.

 

The Pantheon Revisited

Photo by Jim Lane

As I pointed out originally, the Pantheon is notoriously difficult to photograph at street level. Add to that vehicular and pedestrian traffic and the task grows even harder. This is a composite of four photos stitched together as best as my meager photo editing skills will allow.

As the name of this blog suggests, it is as much about art now as about art "then." Back in March I did a lengthy discourse on the Pantheon "then" (03-24-13). This sequel is about the Pantheon now.

 



Photo by Jim Lane

Though in remarkably
good condition for its age,
the Pantheon's towering
Corinthian columns tend
to show its age.

June 18, 2013, was a hot day in Rome with temperatures approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 32 Celsius). Rome is a great place to visit on a hot day. The streets are narrow, providing shade, the fountains are plentiful if you're daring enough to indulge, and you need not apologize to yourself or anyone else for excessive consumption of gelato (wonderfully flavorful Italian ice cream). However, such a hot day is not ideal for a 67-year-old man to take a three-and-a-half-mile trek across the city behind a fleet-footed (though wondrously patient) guide less than half my age. But, if you want to "experience" Rome as opposed to merely "seeing" it, walking is the best way (perhaps the only way). Laden down with a video camera, a "still" camera, souvenirs, sunglasses, hat, and the obligatory water bottle, I felt like I was heading into combat rather than on a tourist jaunt.

Photo by Jim Lane

One of four huge, arched niches.

The Pantheon was the second stop, after the Trevi Fountain (more on that sometime in the future). In a city full of old buildings where nothing ever gets torn down, the Pantheon is not just old, it's ancient. Massive and ancient, those are the two first impressions upon approaching and entering the one time Roman temple, now called Santa Maria della Rotonda. The modest (for Rome, at least) plaza fronting the temple/church is known as Plaza della Rotonda. Like virtually every other self-respecting plaza in Rome, it sports it's own obelisk. I can't remember if this one is authentically Egyptian or just a two-thousand-year-old Roman copy. In any case the Italians ought to double the plaza's size, given the enormous mass and importance of this ancient Roman landmark.

Photo by Jim Lane

The glare of the sun through the oculus in the darkened chamber makes for bad photography, but underscores the visual power of this predictable lighting device.

Inside, the one-time temple has been thinly disguised as a church. Because of this, the interior is more pristine than the rough-hewn exterior, having withstood the ravages of the centuries. Inside, the impression is merely "old"--one of classical beauty (if not restraint). I was surprised to find the Pantheon to be the final resting place of the painter, Raphael Sanszio. A couple Italian kings and a queen are also buried there. Despite the polyglot press of fellow tourists, ones eyes cannot help but drift upward to the famous concrete coffered dome with its equally famous oculus. On a bright, sunny day, as when I visited, this 33-foot "hole in the roof" casts an impressive natural spotlight within the otherwise relatively dark interior, moving about the circular chamber with the rotation of the earth. Visiting the Pantheon is somewhat the same as visiting the Sistine Chapel. Your mind struggles to absorb it all while your feet and legs cry out in agony. Then your guide steps in to mediate this conflict, leading her motley crew on to a date with Castel San Angelo clear over on the other side of the Tiber. Whew... Hey! Wait for me!

Photo by Jim Lane

The tempting, civilized way to see Rome, silhouetted against the jumbled,
touristy plaza crowding in on the ancient Roman landmark.

 Click here for the video version of this day.

Giovanni Paolo Panini

Piazza Navona Flooded, 1756, Giovanni Paolo Panini         

Interior of the Pantheon, 1734,
Giovanni Paolo Panini

A couple years ago, on a hot day in May, I was part of a tour group trekking across the city of Rome visiting such must-see landmarks as the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon (left), and St. Peter's Square. Along the way we stopped for an hour or so to rest our weary feet amid the Baroque splendors of a beautiful public square (pizza in Italian) called the Piazza Navona. Crowning the elongated piazza is the grandly Baroque Church of Sant'Agnese in Agony (below as seen today; on the left in the painting above). I've since read that each weekend in August during the 1650s and 60s they used to flood the square in order to let the populace cool off in water roughly a foot deep. Gee, I sure wish they'd done that while I was there. The square is blessed by three impressive fountains, the most famous of which is Bernini's Four Rivers Fountain in the center of the Piazza. It was tempting, but I think the local authorities today rather frown on tourist cooling off in its inviting, sparkling waters. However, the 18th-century Italian painter, Giovanni Paolo Panini, gives us some idea of what it must have been like to enjoy a refreshing wading pool on a hot summer day in the middle of Rome (above).

 

Copyright, Jim Lane

Sant'Agnese in Agone, Piazza Navona, 2013

Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1736,
Louis Gabriel Blanchet

Although I've yet to make it to Paris, London, and Istanbul, nowhere else in Europe do you find the acute juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern than in Rome. The Piazza Navona is probably the most obvious example, in that it dates back originally to the Stadium of Domitian which occupied the site in the 1st-century AD. It's been a public square since around 1500. Today it's a stylish location for small shops, sidewalk cafes, and artists displaying their wares beneath the broiling son. I wouldn't be surprised if, during the 1700s, Giovanni Panini might have been one of them. Panini, born in 1691, specialized in what were called then "veduta" (views) of the city, both ancient and modern (as of the early 1700s, that is). Sometimes they were a mixture of both as seen in his Piazza Navona Flooded (top) from 1756 (a century after they ceased the practice). His 1734 Interior of the Pantheon (above, left), is probably his most impressive and most famous work. The demands of rendering a round room, (with a dome, no less) on the flat surface of a canvas must have been quite challenging.

 

Modern Rome Gallery, 1759, Giovanni Paolo Panini

Having said that, a great number of Panini's Baroque interiors must have been quite challenging. Take a look at Modern Rome Gallery (above) from the 1750s. The painting is a total fantasy. I rather doubt there was ever an art gallery in Rome, (or anywhere else, for that matter) then, or now, that was quite so grand; and any such interior as depicted by Panini would still have been in use as a palace rather than a museum for at least another fifty years. Yet the amassing of so many famous paintings is enough to make a modern day curator's mouth water. Notice they nearly all bear a striking resemblance to Panini's work. I might also add that Panini did as many as a dozen other paintings quite similar to the one above, though this one is a bit more colorful than some.

Interior of St. Peter's Rome (as seen from the entrance), ca. 1754, Giovanni Paolo Panini.

Ball Given by the Duc de Nivernais
 to Mark the Birth of the Dauphin,
 1750,  Giovanni Paolo Panini

When it came to painting classical interiors, Panini did not limit himself to fantasy art galleries. He also like painting the intricate architectural perspectives of famous churches, theaters, Roman ruins, and other famous landmarks, making him somewhat the Canaletto of Rome. Both artists specialized in producing expensive tourist souvenir art. Panini's Interior of St. Peter's Rome (above), if you've ever been there, done that, is spectacularly mindboggling--far more colorful (and yes, beautiful) than the cathedral itself. And speaking of boggling the mind, Panini's Festa in Teatro a Roma (below), contains an exquisitely extreme degree of detail both in terms of the theater's ornate architecture and décor as well as that of those attending the opera. His Ball Given by the Duc de Nivernais to Mark the Birth of the Dauphin (left) dates from around the same time.


Festa in Teatro a Roma, Giovanni Paolo Panini

Adoration of the Magi, 1755, Panini

Panini was also adept at utilizing his architectural rendering skills in depicting biblical scenes, though his Adoration of the Magi (left) stretches the scriptural version to the breaking point, depicting the Holy Family among ancient Roman ruins some seventy years before the Roman army inflicted such devastation on the city of Jerusalem. His Jesus Drives the Money Changers from the Temple (below), from 1750, though rather restrained in action by Baroque standards, Panini's depiction would seem to be somewhat more historically accurate in details. In general though, Panini usually wasn't much interested in actual history, or for that matter, in accuracy either, often rearranging the famous landmarks of Rome in his paintings as he saw fit so as to satisfy his tourist-client's inclination to want included as much as possible in their painted souvenirs.

Jesus Drives the Money Changers from the Temple, 1750, Giovanni Paolo Panini

Copyright, Jim Lane

Rome's Coliseum and Arch of
Constantine, 2010.

We see this "freedom of expression" most often in Panini's Roman landscapes. His View of the Coliseum (below), from 1747, is fairly accurate both in the details and the placement of the famous arena and the nearby Arch of Constantine (as compared to the modern-day scene, left). However, Panini's View of the Roman Forum (bottom), also from 1747, indicates any number of discrepancies from the actual scene. The 2010 photo of the forum (just below Panini's version), though from a different angle than Panini chose, even stripping away the encroachment of 20th-century urbanization, and from what I recall, bears little resemblance to Panini's Roman Forum.

View of the Coliseum, 1747, Giovanni Paolo Panini

View of the Roman Forum, 1747,  Giovanni Paolo Panini--somewhat romanticized.

Copyright, Jim Lane

Even allowing for 20th-century urbanization, Panini's
Roman Forum looks very little like the real thing (above).

 

The Panthéon de la Guerre

A small portion of the original Pantheon de la Guerre (temple of war) by Pierre Carrier-Belleuse and Auguste Gorguet.

Don't let anyone tell you "Size doesn't matter." I'm not sure that's necessarily true in all circumstances, but I know it applies to art, especially painting. In a museum setting, a painting which would look find hanging over your couch simply gets lost in the crowd of gigantic works painted by artist both now and then (in the past). In terms of square feet of surface covered by the artist, let me ask, what might you guess was largest painting ever rendered by an artist? If you guessed Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling you'd be wrong. At a mere 5,382 sq. ft. you'd not even be close. It's said that Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, which hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (also in the U.S. Capitol), is the world's largest framed painting. I don't know if that's still true, but I've seen it in person and it is "large." However, at a miniscule 263 square feet, it's not even in the same ballpark with the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, which in turn is not in the ballpark with The 1918 painting, Pantheon de la Guerre (top).

 

Pierre Carrier-Belleuse
Self-portrait

My original premise is something of "trick question." The key word is "was." That is to say, the massive French mural commemorating the heroes of WW I no longer exists in its original form. At 18,090 sq. feet, the original painting was 402 feet long (that's longer than an American football field, folks) and 45 feet high, making it one of the largest murals in the world. It was completed in Paris in 1918 by around 140 artists working under the guidance of the French artists, Pierre Carrier-Belleuse (right) and Auguste Gorguet. In an octagonal museum built specifically to house the painting, artists pieced together an enormous circular cyclo-rama canvas, which contained over 5,000 life-size portraits of war heroes, royalty, and government officials from the Allies of World War I, with France dominating the stage. The Panthéon de la Guerre was unveiled, to great fanfare, 100 years ago on Oct. 19, 1918. In the century that followed, it was chopped up, auctioned off, hidden away and even stored outdoors in a crate for a decade before finding its place on the walls of the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, 4,500 miles away from the start of its unlikely journey. Today, its "chopped down" version, it's a modest 520 sq. ft., to fit a wall some seventy feet long.

A few of the nearly 6,000 life-size
portraits from the painting.

Work on the painting had begun, with astonishing foresight, just a few months into the war, in the winter of 1914. Carrier-Belleuse and Auguste François-Marie Gorguet together conceived the idea and established the theme, basically a glor-ification of war...the "great war," the "war to end all wars." Together, the two artists enlisted an array of painters--mostly elderly ones, since many of the younger ones were on the front line. They obtained financial and political support, which was essential due to the scale of the project and the materials required. Among the latter were 18,000 square feet of Belgian linen for the canvas, tons of steel armature to support it and enormous amounts of paint, all of which were scarce and quite costly in wartime. Although their intent was patriotic, there was also a commercial element involve from the start. Panoramic paintings were money-making ventures, sort of the Hollywood blockbusters of the day. But it was really a 19th-century phenomenon, and this was sort of its last gasp.

The Belgian section of the Pantheon de la Guerre with King Albert and a Cardinal.

The painting was hung in a complete, uninterrupted circle; visitors descended into a tunnel to emerge right in the middle of it. The custom-built, octagonal building housing it was enviably located in Rue de l'Université, just a few steps from Les Invalides and only two or three blocks from the Louvre. Less than a month before the end of the war the massive canvas mural was inaugurated by French President Raymond Poincaré, who was, himself, immortalized in the painting. Although a circular painting has, technically no center, the main focus of the Panthéon de la Guerre was a temple and staircase, representing the French section that spanned about 122 feet. This segment contained most of the 5,000 figures portrayed in the painting, with the rest split between other Allied nations including Britain, Italy, Russia and the United States, each given a space of around 32 feet or less. The background was meant to represent the battlefields of France and Belgium.

A detail of the original painting depicts a British nursing sister.

It was no simple task searching for figures worthy of appearing in the artwork. Assistants sifted through the press and read the citations of the day, to see who was killed and find out who was most deserving of being put in this sort of encyclopedia of the French war effort. The artists obtained photographs of people who had been killed and made sketches from those, while others, such as government officials, were sketched in person. The spectacular art showpiece remained in its Paris home for nine years and was seen by three million people. It was as much for tourists as it was for the French, and was particularly popular with American soldiers.

However, as paintings go, even the largest painting in the world (at the time) had a somewhat limited "shelf life." By 1927, interest had started to wane. The French sold it to three American businessmen who wanted to take it on a U.S. tour. They paid something on the order of $250,000, which was a princely sum at the time. Together with the French they arranged a high-profile sendoff. The creators of the painting were opposed to the sale, fearing they would never see it again, although the buyers promised to eventually return it. The "sail-away" party involved ambassadors and bands playing national anthems, in the hope that the Panthéon de la Guerre would cement Franco-American relations. A few modifications were made for the American tour, most notably the inclusion of more women and African-Americans.

A portion of the painting (as edited) at the Kansas City World War I Memorial.

The first stop was New York's Madison Square Garden, where it attracted one million visitors in eight weeks. The organizers had an appropriately gargantuan opening night with 25,000 people and lots of notables attending, but the show ended up closing two months ahead of schedule, so the intrepid entrepreneurs were apparently not making as much money as they'd hoped. The painting, like the war itself, was perceived very differently in the U.S. than in France. The French had suffered about 1.7 million deaths in the conflict, whereas America, which entered the war in 1917, lost around 117,000. Americans had a faint, mostly celebratory memory of the war; the French a rather vivid, bloody one.

 A program cover from the 1933 World Fair featuring the Panthéon de la Guerre.

Promotion as the painting was hardly as solemn as before in France. Instead, they blew horns and even fired machine guns in Chicago for the 1933 World Fair. It was little short of a carnival attraction, far from the original spirit of the painting, which was rather quiet for all its grandiosity. The last stop on the painting's U.S. tour was San Francisco in 1940. By that time, the artwork was falling out of fashion. It was sent to a storage facility in Baltimore, where it laid abandoned for twelve years in a tomb-like, 55-foot crate originally built for it in Paris. Being too big to keep indoors, it was left outside. Moreover, once the owners stopped paying the storage fee due to yet another war in Europe, it was auctioned off. The auction took place in July of 1952 and included both the painting and the apparatus required to exhibit it, all of which weighed in at an astounding ten tons. Although the auction records listed it as "an art object of unusual value," few art connoisseurs showed up. The Panthéon de la Guerre went for a paltry $3,400 (around $32,000 in today's money) to William H. Haussner, a local restaurant owner who was also an art collector and, ironically, a German World War I veteran.



The Panthéon de la Guerre being uncrated.

Haussner owned a restaurant in Baltimore that was well known for having good art and bad art (mostly the latter) on its walls. Haussner didn't want to see such an important work go to scrap metal collectors who were only interested in the armature of the painting. Opening the giant crate was a massive operation requiring 22 workers and a 48-foot tractor-trailer. Life magazine sent reporters to document it. Yet even with a new owner, the painting's future looked bleak. Haussner tried to find a museum that was willing to take it. He called on the Smithsonian. He was willing to donate it; but nobody wanted such a massive "white elephant." The cost to repair it and then create a building for it were prohibitive. Even the French didn't want it back. It wasn't considered 'high' art."



Daniel MacMorris reconfiguring the painting.

Fortunately, there was one person who wanted it, a Daniel MacMorris of Kansas City, Kansas. He was an American WW I veteran who had seen the painting in Paris during the war. He had even gone on to study with Gorguet, one of the two original creators. After the war he became a professional artist. Awestruck by the Life magazine article, MacMorris started lobbying Haussner to donate the painting to the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, the nation's largest World War I museum, where he worked. Haussner eventually agreed, giving The Panthéon de la Guerre a second life.

MacMorris and two assistants "edit" the painting.

However the painting needed to be adapted for its new home, so MacMorris took on the task. From the beginning, he knew that he was not going to be able to save the entire painting. MacMorris had a finite amount of wall space to work with and, wanted to pay homage to Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations. But his "rearranging," as he called it, is best known for being US-centric. Few Russian or Eastern European figures made the cut. In fact, he kept very little of the original canvas. In terms of square footage, that amounted to only about seven-percent of the original, which also made it into a regular painting that's totally flat against the wall. He ended up repainting a lot of the figures. Despite the rather radical "editing," the "new" painting is quite impressive for only having taken a couple of years.

The "Americanized" central section of the Panthéon de la Guerre today.

The new, Americanized version of the painting, which now included Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt, among others, was unveiled in Kansas City on Nov. 11, 1959. MacMorris centered it on the U. S. involvement in the war. He put Woodrow Wilson and all the American political and military leaders in the center, with the Allies on either side. The whole "panthéon" theme with all the French soldiers was totally removed. The result was quite a different work of art with America dominating the scene and seeming the most responsible for the victory. What happened to the rest of the original painting? A large portion of the original French section now hangs in another hall at the museum, which also keeps dozens of smaller fragments in its archives and exhibits the most significant ones. MacMorris threw away large portions of the canvas, but he also doled out pieces to friends and acquaintances. Some have ended up in flea markets and online going for at little as $99.
 

Francis Danby

Shipwreck, Francis Danby

Very few creative individuals choose to become artists. Still fewer do so for the money (try to restrain your laughter). Although the money may be a part of any such incentive, the more common reason is a deep-seated personal need to create. Other motives may involve a hope for praise and recognition of ones work, and perhaps some degree of fame (which, of course, is the least likely of all to be realized). Anyone choosing to become a professional artist who doesn't ponder these career factors is quite naïve and almost certainly destined for failure. Relying on natural talent, seeking academic training in some art form, and exhibiting a dogged persistence in the face of adversity are all important. But taken alone, none of these advantages and attributes are sufficient to guarantee success. I think I can safely say that the most important item in an artists lifetime success is simply, daring to be different...VERY...different.

 

A View in Wales, 1826, Francis Danby

Every day I search through dozens of biographies of artists of every era and type. Again and again I see this one, single, personal attribute (or its lacking) standing apart as the key element as to where an artist resides in the pantheon of greatness. Those lacking it get trod under foot on the front steps--a law of nature, as it were, carved in the stone of those temple steps. Moreover, it's not enough to simply be "different." Most artist are a little odd, either personally or through their work. The glue that binds talent, training, hard work, and all the other artistic success factors together resides in the one word boldly printed above--VERY.

Copyright, Jim Lane

The Real America, 1970, Jim Lane. Different, yes, but not VERY different.

Dutch Windmill, 1828,
Francis Danby

The British painter of the early 19th century named Francis Danby, despite his best efforts, was one of the steps leading to the art pantheon who was trod under foot for the very reason I mentioned above. I must confess, I re-present one of those well-worn steps as well. I like to think my work has been both technically proficient and creatively "different." However, for various rea-sons, some due to my own lacking and some not, my work has not been different enough. It has not been VERY different. Danby was mostly a landscape painter painting in a Rom-antic style, but of insufficient means to be able to ignore his family's financial needs in order to break free from the norm as did his far more successful peers, J.M.W Turner, John Constable, John Everett Millais, and those of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who were VERY different, each in his own way.

The Delivery of Israel--Pharaoh and his Hosts
overwhelmed in the Red Sea, 1825, Francis Danby

Francis Danby, 1860

Francis Danby was Irish, born in Killinick, County Wexford, in 1793. He moved with his family to Dublin during the 1798 Wexford Uprising. After being left penniless by the death of his father in 1807, he went on to study land-scape painting at the Royal Dublin Society art schools. At the age of 20, he visited the Royal Academy Exhib-ition in London with his artist friends George Petrie and James Arthur O'Connor, and was much impressed with Frosty Morning by J.M.W. Turner. However, this expedition was under-taken with such inadequate funds, it quickly came to an end. The three ended up having to walk back to Bristol. They paused at Bristol when Danby found they were unable to pay for a single night's lodging. Danby managed to raise the cost of their room and board by selling two sketches of the Wicklow mountains for eight shillings. Later, he continued to get trifling sums for watercolor his drawings. He remained there working diligently, sending to the London several exhibitions pictures of some importance. There his large pictures in oil The Delivery of the Israelites (above) from 1828 quickly attracted attention. In fact, it and others gained him election as an associate of the Royal Academy. He left Bristol and moved to London in 1828. Danby was well on his way to greatness. His work was different, though not VERY different from that of other landscape painters of the era.

View of a Lake in Norway, Francis Danby

Francis Danby suddenly left London around 1829, declaring that he would never live there again. For one reason or another Danby felt that the Academy, instead of aiding him, had used him badly (the exact details have never been made known). Then an insurmountable domestic difficulty overtook him (his wife ran off with the painter, Paul Falconer Poole). For the next eleven or twelve years Danby lived an impoverished Bohemian lifestyle in Switzerland on Lake Geneva painting only now and then. He returned to England in 1840, when his sons were growing up. Danby exhibited his powerful (15-foot-wide), The Deluge (below) that year with great success, which served to revitalize his reputation and career.

The Deluge, 1840, Francis Danby

Considered to be one of the great Irish artists of the 19th Century, Danby spent the last 15 years of his life in Devon, where he died an unhappy man, aggrieved by a life of financial insecurity and lack of acclaim. Both of Danby's sons became landscape painters. The elder, James Francis Danby, exhibited at the Royal Academy. Like his father, he excelled in depicting sunrises and sunsets. The younger son, Thomas Danby, specialized in watercolors of Welsh scenes. In 1866, the latter was nominated as an Associate of the Royal Academy, but missed election by one vote. Francis Danby died at his home in Exmouth in 1861 at the age of sixty-seven. As a man Danby lived and died under a cloud, made deeper because the imputations against him were never made public. It is doubtful, however, if he would have gained much by publicity. The steps leading to a pantheon, are largely anonymous.

Shipwreck, 1858, Francis Danby.
A symbolic self-portrait perhaps?

 

Thomas Jefferson

Monticello west front

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy entertained at a state dinner an august group of Nobel Prize winners and other outstanding figures from various scientific fields of the time. In remarks afterwards, he commented, "This is the most remarkable assembly of talent and expertise in the arts and sciences that has ever been gathered at one time in this house...with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." It was not a hollow statement. Jefferson was probably the most broadly educated man ever to hold the office of President. He was a statesman, lawyer, writer, scientist, educator, architect, and farmer. A graduate of William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he studied law, it was there he met an earlier gentleman-architect, Richard Taliaferro. Neither man had any formal training in design or engineering beyond that which they were able to obtain themselves from the books on the subject by English architects such as Robert Morris and Palladio. As early as 1760, Jefferson began designing his future home to be built on a hilltop site he called Monticello near Charlottsville, Virginia. Construction didn't begin until 1769, and even then being far inland, located in the foothills of the Appalachians, it was slow going. The original design called for a two story structure with a tall, balconied portico. It was completed in 1782.

Monticello's main floor with the original 1772 structure in black.
Note the minimized, almost hidden stairways.

The Revolutionary War intervened. Jefferson went to Paris as the American minister to France. There he came to realize that the world did not revolve around Palladio. There he was exposed to the best Paris had to offer in the way of culture, art, and architecture. When he returned, after the war, he had his home torn down to the foundation. He replaced it with a simpler, Neoclassical design with strong French and Italian influences, most notably the Italian Villa Rotunda, which had as the basis of its design none other than the Roman Pantheon itself. He employed this element on a limited basis adding a dome-topped drum and portico to his new design, except that the drum became an octagon and the dome was created of wood. It was fairly simple in design. The same design he used on a more impressive scale in planning the library on the campus of the University of Virginia (1822-26) which he helped found.

Library rotunda, University of Virginia,
Charlottsville, influenced by the Pantheon
in Rome

As a result of its redesign, Monticello's combination of brick and whitewashed wood is, without a doubt, the most beautiful home in America for its time. Regardless of whether one approaches it from the East or the West, its visage is perfection itself. Jefferson had some pretty radical ideas about architecture (as, indeed, he did on a number of subjects). He felt, for instance, that no home should have a "back" to it. He saw his home as something of a domestic temple, freestanding and approachable from any angle. He had little use for the large, impressive, curved stairways coming into vogue at the time. His are barely two feet wide and all but hidden away. Indeed, the upper level consists of little more than an octagon shaped ballroom under the dome and attic storage space  What appears at first glance to be an elegant, yet surprisingly modest one-story plan, is actually three stories, thanks to ingenious arrangement of balustrades which largely hide the upper level, and broad, terraced wings extending out from the exposed basement level.  Inside are architectural innovations that (with the addition of indoor plumbing) would, even today, make for very gracious, comfortable living--a home fit for a President.

Despite Jefferson's distaste for it, Monticello does have
a seldom photographed "back" side, the East front seen here.
The dome is so low as to be barely discernible from this angle.