The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present by Tod A Marder

Author:Tod A Marder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-05-30T21:00:00+00:00

8.1. Madonna and Child icon from the Pantheon, seventh century? (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome)

The Christianized Pantheon may thus have fused the eastern practice of dedicating centralized sanctuaries to the Virgin Mary with the idea – which seems to have become Roman practice in the late sixth or seventh centuries – of providing a Marian church with an icon of the Virgin and Child. At the Pantheon, the icon would thus have served as the equivalent for the important contact relics of the Virgin in the Constantinopolitan Soros church. It is possible, however, that the Marian icon was not installed until sometime after 650 when the church changed its official name from the generic designation ad martyres, to Sanctae Mariae ad martyres. The explicit emphasis on the Virgin Mary in the new dedication may thus be attributable to the arrival of the icon. From the second half of the eighth century, the circular shape of the church was embodied in the popular name, Sanctae Mariae Rotundae, which became its official name by the beginning of the twelfth century.26

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