The Holy Apostles in Constantinople and Washington, DC: The Projects of Albert Mathias Friend, Jr., and Paul Underwood (original) (raw)
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This paper seeks to visualise Justinian’s church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Although this church was demolished after the Ottoman conquest, it was described by Byzantine authors including Prokopios (6th century), Constantine of Rhodes (10th century) and Nikolaos Mesarites (12th century). Interpreting these descriptions helps to recapture some aspects of the lost building. Further insights can be drawn from similar monuments, including the churches of St. John at Ephesos and San Marco in Venice. From the late 19th century onwards, several scholars used this evidence to visualise the lost church. In spite of their great value, these reconstructions include ill-defined areas and sometimes contradict the evidence in our disposal. This paper tries to overcome these obstacles through a reexamination of the historical descriptions of the Holy Apostles. These documents are interpreted graphically by reference to the churches of St. John at Ephesos and San Marco in Venice. Our comparisons with St. John at Ephesos benefit from information which was not available to previous scholars. Indeed, our recent work on the Ephesian church has revealed new evidence regarding the form of the church that Prokopios considered as identical to the Holy Apostles. This helps to examine the descriptions of the Holy Apostles in a new light. This new approach also sets the basis for a re-examination of the possible relationship between the church and the first Fatih Mosque, which was probably built on the same site. In spite of our new findings, many aspects of the Holy Apostles remain obscure. Acknowledging the limited evidence in our disposal, the current paper identifies those parts of the reconstruction that remain conjectural and explores alternative visualisation hypotheses. Shedding light on one of the most sophisticated churches of Constantinople, this paper helps to gain a better sense of the development of ecclesiastical architecture in the Early Byzantine period.
The Holy Apostles: Visualizing a lost monument
The Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) presents The Holy Apostles: Visualizing a Lost Monument, curated by Fani Gargova (ICFA's Byzantine Research Associate) and Beatrice Daskas (Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellow, 2012-2013, and currently a Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow). In conjunction with the 2015 Byzantine Studies Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, this exhibition highlights drawings by Paul Underwood, which resulted from a project to reconstruct the lost church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.
The Holy Apostles Spring Symposium 2015 Symposiarchs
2015
Introduction: Symposium, Project, Monument and Visualization Margaret Mullett (Dumbarton Oaks) In 1940 Dumbarton Oaks was conveyed to Harvard, and the Research Institute founded. A striking feature was the emphasis on collaborative research, highly unusual in the humanities until fifty years later. One of these projects initiated by A. M. Friend was an attempt to reconstruct the architecture and mosaics of the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, using the architect’s skills of Paul Underwood, the philological skills of Glanville Downey, and his own skills as an art historian. The project was never published, nor was the symposium of 1948. The symposium of 2015 will investigate this riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma inside a puzzle; it will seek to determine why the project and symposium were never completed; it will look at the nature of scholarly reconstruction of lost buildings and how scholarly practice has changed over the seventy-five years from 1940 to 20...
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Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts137, 2022
This paper presents novel observations on various late antique floor mosaics in Constantinople and western Asia Minor, both secular and ecclesiastical. In doing so, the paper observes that church floors in Constantinople and western Asia Minor are generally poor in, and often altogether void of, figural representations. This aniconic trait contrasts with secular floors in the same region and with church floors further to the east, in eastern Anatolia and the Levant, many of which are centered on figural scenes or form figure carpets. Thus, the aniconism in question appears to have been particular to churches in Constantinople and the diocese of Asia or the patriarchate of Constantinople. It mirrors similarly aniconic wall mosaics in church apses and was also observed by synagogues in this region, but not in the Levant. Sophisticated layouts and a systematic ornamentation in accordance with the function and meaning of the various church spaces – sanctuaries, naves, aisles, narthices, etc. – show that the aniconism in question was part of an intricate decorational scheme and probably the reflection of a particular religious identity.
This essay concerns itself with the meaning and function of the Communion of the Apostles in Byzantine monumental painting. Scholars have often interpreted the scene as a liturgical reimagining of the Last Supper, aimed at creating a mimetic relationship between ritual and image, or between the liturgical act and its heavenly prototype. In contrast, based on the history of the scene in illuminated manu scripts, the accompanying inscriptions, and commentaries on the liturgy, I argue that the Communion of the Apostles is an illustration of the historical institution of the Eucharist and has little to do with the everyday liturgical praxis. This continues to be the case even when, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, Christ appears in such paintings wearing patriarchal vestments as the Great Archpriest. I maintain that this new element is rather a manifestation and an advertisement of the enhanced political and religious status of the ecumenical patriarch in the Late Byzantine period.