The Dome Fresco and Pendentives

Tilt your head back and the ceiling seems to vanish into the distance. The Panthéon's dome rises a full 85 meters, its roof weighs 15,000 tons, and just four pillars hold all of it up. During construction, the press even ran articles worrying that the dome might come crashing down on people's heads. It stood because the architect, Soufflot, built it with a massive iron framework beneath the stone.

Let's start with the fresco. It was painted by Antoine-Jean Gros, a war painter who had followed Napoleon I on campaign, and it shows Saint Genevieve alongside the greatest rulers in French history. Napoleon I commissioned it himself. He wanted to present himself as the heir to France's great monarchs and to underline his legitimacy, since he had begun as First Consul of a republic and then seized power in a coup to become emperor.

So Gros placed Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, at the center. Reading from left to right, he painted Clovis I, king of the 5th century; Charlemagne, emperor of the 8th century; Saint Louis, king of the 13th century; and finally Napoleon I. Yet the last figure isn't Napoleon at all. It's Louis XVIII. By the time Gros had finished Clovis I and Charlemagne, Napoleon was in exile on an island, brought down by a string of defeats after overreaching in his hunger for conquest. With the empire gone and the monarchy restored under Louis XVIII, Gros was ordered to paint Louis XVIII in Napoleon's place. The work Napoleon commissioned in 1811 was finally completed in 1824, with Louis XVIII in the final spot.

Now look at the pendentives, the triangular sections that support the dome at its four corners. The dome fresco was finished in 1824, but the pendentive decoration was still unpainted as late as 1831. That year King Louis-Philippe I commissioned the painter François Gérard to complete it, and he filled the pendentives with goddesses symbolizing Glory, Justice, Death, and Homeland.