Paul Atkins Underwood
April 1, 2009 by Max Crandale
Filed under History
Date born: 1902
Place Born: Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
Date died: 1968
Place died: Knoxville, TN
Byzantinist and Dumbarton Oaks scholar. Underwood’s father was a Presbyterian missionary in Puerto Rico when his son, Paul, was born. He graduated from Princeton University in 1925 with a B. S. in architecture, continuing for a master of fine arts degree in architecture from Princeton in 1928. Underwood initially practiced architecture in New York until the Great Depression of the 1930s caused commissions to cease. He traveled to Greece, making a personal study of the classical and medieval monuments. Underwood returned to the United States and Princeton in 1935, where medievalists had emerged as the leaders of the department of art and archaeology there. He married Irene Jarde during this time. In 1938 Underwood joined the faculty of Cornell University, teaching art history courses. His earliest articles, one on the iconography of a pilgrim staff-part of the catalog of the Museo San Marco–and another on the Bernini towers for St. Peters, reflect the range of area characteristic of his Princeton mentor Charles Rufus Morey (q.v.). By his own admission, teaching was not his forte and in 1943 he received a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University’s early medieval study center near Washington, DC. The Senior Scholar in Residence, Albert M. Friend (q.v.) enlisted Underwood’s help in 1945 to write a comprehensive study of the decoration sources for the destroyed Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. He was appointed assistant professor in 1946. Underwood moved to Instanbul in 1949. The following year, 1950, the head and founder of the private Byzantine Institute, Thomas Whittemore (1871-1950) died suddenly and Underwood took over as Field Director assisted by Ernest Hawkins (q.v.), who had been Whittemore’s second-in-command. At that time, the group was engaged in uncovering the mosaics of Hagia Sophia. Underwood became an assistant professor at Dumbarton Oaks in 1951. As director of field work, he completed the Hagia Sophia work and then supervised the excavation and restoration of the church of Kariye Djami in Istanbul, again begun by Whittemore, with a team that included in addition to Hawkins, A. H. S. “Peter” Megaw (q.v.) There the team uncovered important Byzantine frescos and mosaics. Dumbarton Oaks gradually took over the research from the Institute, initially paying the salaries of the team. Though Kariye Djami became his life interest, Underwood also participated on the exploration and restorations of the Fethiye Djami (Church of the Pammakaristos), the Zayrek Djami (Church of the Pantokrator) and the Fenari Isa Djami (Church of the Theotokos of Contatine Lips). He was made full professor at Dumbarton Oaks in 1960. In 1963 Dumbarton Oaks assumed full responsibility for the field work, which Underwood continued to oversee as chair of the “Committee on Field Work.” He published his Istanbul research in the three-volume The Kariye Djami beginning in 1966. The Princeton University Press Bollingen-series book was awarded College Art Association’s Charles Rufus Morey award. He completed a fourth volume on Kariye Djami shortly before his death.
Underwood’s early research publications were iconographic, reflecting the approach of Princeton’s faculty. His major work on Kariye Djami though largely descriptive, contains analysis of the decoration in broader context.
Home Country: United States
Sources: Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 59 cited; Constable, Giles. “Dumbarton Oaks and Byzantine Field Work.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983): 172; [obituary:] “Paul A. Underwood, Byzantium Expert.” New York Times September 27, 1968, p. 47; Kitzinger, Ernst. “Paul Atkins Underwood (1902-1968).” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23 (1969): 1-6.
Bibliography: The Kariye Djami. 4 vols. New York: 1966-1968; “Notes on the Work of the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul: 1954.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9 (1956): 291-300; “Notes on the Work of the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul: 1955-1956.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 269-287; and Hawkins, Ernest. “The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Istanbul: The Portrait of the Emperor Alexander: A Report on Work Done by the Byzantine Institute in 1959 and 1960.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 15 (1961): 187-217.
Thomas Whittemore
March 31, 2009 by Max Crandale
Filed under History
In 1948, Thomas Whittemore (1871 – 1950) and Paul A. Underwood, from the Byzantine Institute of America and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, sponsored a programme for restoration of the Chora Church in Istanbul.
Thomas Whittemore was a scholar, archaeologist and the founder of the Byzantine Institute of America. He was born in Cambridge,Massachusetts in 1871. His good personal relationship with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder and the first president of the Turkish Republic, enabled him to gain permission from the Turkish government to start the preservation of the Hagia Sophia mosaics in 1931.
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Discovering the Greek side of Istanbul
September 16, 2009 by Max Crandale
Filed under Articles
That Istanbul is a real treasure chest for history, art and architecture freaks is no secret. Its colorful mosaic of historical city structures — mosques, churches, synagogues, palaces, castles and towers — reflects the many, many social and cultural influences of a number of foreign communities that have left their indelible footprints across the city throughout its long history.
The oldest settlement on the land that is now İstanbul was, however, Greek.
Already, in 685 B.C., settlers from the ancient Greek town of Megara chose to colonize the town of Chalcedon, in today’s Kadıköy district, thus aiming to secure the Bosporus as a channel of trade between the Greek polities and the Black Sea region. Some years later, in 667 B.C., famous Greek King Byzas went on colonizing the European side of the Bosporus further, thus founding the city of Byzantion.
Two prominent examples of ancient Greek architecture are the Serpentine Column and Leander’s Tower.
Being approximately 2,500 years old, the Serpentine Column is said to be İstanbul’s oldest remaining Greek monument. Erected to honor the triumph of the Greeks over the Persians at Plataea, it originally stood at Delphi (both ancient cities on Greek ground) and was moved to İstanbul in 324 B.C. by Constantine the Great to mark the declaration of the new capital city of the then-founded Roman Empire under the name of Constantinople. The originally eight-meter-high piece was made up of three intertwined serpents which supported a golden bowl. The bowl is believed to have been lost or stolen when the city was sacked during the Fourth Crusade. Some say the heads were hit and cut off by a drunken nobleman in the 17th century but one of them can still be seen in the İstanbul Archaeology Museum. The rest of the column can be found today at the Hippodrome in the Sultanahmet quarter.
Surrounded by no fewer stories is Leander’s Tower, often referred to as Maiden’s Tower and located offshore in the Bosporus in the Üsküdar district. It was actually built in 408 B.C. by an Athenian general to control Persian ships sailing along the Bosporus. Another more well-known story is that of a sultan who erected the tower to protect his daughter from a snake bite, predicted by an oracle. But, as the story goes, there was no way to escape destiny: On the day of her 18th birthday, the sultan brought his daughter a basket of fruit as a gift and hiding within it, of course, was the predicted snake. The tower, which also contains a small, romantic restaurant, can be visited today by taking one of the small boats that sail from the nearby shore.
However, with the fall of Rome in 476, all that remained of the Roman Empire was its eastern part, which then came to be known as the Byzantine Empire. Distinctly Greek in culture and the center of Greek Orthodox Christianity, its capital, Constantinople, was adorned with many magnificent churches, including probably the most well known, Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia), once the world’s largest Christian cathedral.
Other important churches that were built later on under Byzantine rule include the Pammakaristos Church, which is now Fethiye Mosque in the Çarşamba neighborhood of today’s Fatih district, and the Church of St. Savior in Chora, situated in the western Edirnekapı district of İstanbul and especially famous for its beautiful mosaics and paintings.
After the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Sultan Mehmed II (Mehmet the Conqueror) in 1453, naturally many city structures were destroyed. Mehmed’s main concern with İstanbul had to do with rebuilding the city’s defenses and re-population, and he soon devoted much energy to bringing prosperity to İstanbul. In 1459, he sent out orders that any Greeks — as well as Slavs, Jews and Armenians — who had left İstanbul as slaves or refugees and whose diverse skills were needed now to transform the city into a flourishing capital of the empire were allowed to return to the city.
Every third inhabitant in İstanbul was Greek
According to a census of 1477, there were 9,486 houses occupied by Muslims, 3,743 by Greeks, 1,647 by Jews, 267 by Christians from Crimea and 31 by Gypsies. Nearly every third inhabitant of the city was Greek at that time, so the Greek population played a significant role in the social, political and economic life of the city and the multiethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire in general. The leader of the Greek community within the empire officially became the ecumenical patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, which was moved to the Church of St. George in İstanbul’s Fener district in 1586. The patriarchate complex includes the authorization offices, the patriarchate library, the financial offices and the public enterprises of the patriarchate and the Cathedral Church of St. George. The church is definitely worth visiting. It is especially famous for its priceless artifacts and relics, which include the patriarchal throne, believed to date from the fifth century; three rare mosaic icons; a fragment of the Pillar of the Flagellation to which Jesus was tied and whipped; and the coffins of the three saints.
Further on, the Greek High School for boys on the top of Fener hill became an important educational institution to educate young Greeks for Ottoman bureaucracy and orthodox clergy as well. The Yoakimyon High School for girls and Marasli Greek Elementary School next to the patriarchate are other schools that can still be found in the district.
As you see, the list of Greek footprints in İstanbul seems endless. To start tracing them back, just take a small tour of Fener — you will come across an incredible number of smaller, more or less well-preserved churches, and you can still find a few of the typical, small Greek single-family houses, recognizable by their finely decorated facades.
Just take a look — it’s well worth it!
by Kristina Kamp
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