The Columns
And Pilasters In The Interior Of This Temple Are Beautiful, All Of Jaune
Antique And One Entire Stone Each.
How much better would it have been to
replace the statues of the Dii Majorum Gentium which occupied the
Niches,
by statues in marble of the Apostles, instead of the dolls dressed in
tawdry colors, and the frippery gilding of the altars on which they stand,
which disfigure this noble building. The Pantheon was built by Agrippa as
the inscription shews. In the interior are sixteen columns of jaune
antique. The bronze that formerly ornamented this temple was made use of
to fabricate the baldachin of St Peter's. Of late years it has been the
fashion to erect monuments affixed to the walls of the interior of the
Pantheon to the memory of the great men and heroes of poetry, painting,
sculpture and music who were natives of Italy, or for foreigners,
celebrated for their excellence in those arts, who have died in Rome. Here
are for instance, tablets to the memory of Metastasio, Rafael Mengs,
Sacchini, Poussin, Winckelmann; the Phidias of modern days, the illustrious
Canova, has recommended the placing in the Pantheon of the busts in marble
of all the great men who have flourished in Italy, as the most appropriate
ornament to this temple. He himself with a princely liberality has made a
present to it of the busts of Dante, Petrarca, Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini,
Alfieri, Michel Angelo, Rafaello, Metastasio and various other worthies.
These busts are all the production either of Canova himself, or made by his
pupils under his direction; they are not the least remarkable ornament of
the place. In the centre of the Piazza della Rotonda stands an obelisk
brought from Egypt, which belonged to a temple sacred to Isis in that
country.
I next repaired to the Piazza di Navona, a large and spacious square,
where there is a superb fountain representing a vast rock with four
colossal figures, one of which reclines at the foot of the rock, at each
angle of the pedestal that supports it, and it is surmounted by an Obelisk
which was brought from Egypt and was found in the gardens of Sallust. The
four colossal figures represent the four river Gods of the four great
rivers in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, viz., the Danube, the Ganges,
the Nile, and the Plata. The statue of the Nile has his head half-concealed
by a cloak, emblematical of the source of that river not being discovered.
In the Piazza are frequently held fairs, shews of wild beasts, theatrical
exhibitions and sometimes combats of wild beasts.
I crossed the Tiber on my way to St Peter's at the Ponte di Sant' Angelo;
directly on the other side of the river stands the castle of that name, an
immense edifice formerly the Moles Adriana or Mausoleum of the Emperor
Adrian. It is of a circular form and is a remarkably striking object. From
here there is a spacious street as broad as Portland place, which leads to
the magnificent Piazza, where stands the Metropolitan Church of the
Christian world, the pride of Christendom, the triumph of modern
architecture, flanked on each side by a semi-circular colonnaded portico,
which constitutes one of its greatest beauties and distinguishes it from
all the other temples in the world.
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