When Ottoman Turks breached the walls of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, the first Christian shrine to fall was not Hagia Sophia but the Chora Monastery, which lay close to the Adrianople Gate.1 Entering the church, soldiers found the venerated icon of the Theotokos, which had once been paraded along the walls to provide spiritual protection for the city. They cut the icon to pieces, but not in the interest of diffusing its miraculous powers (as we might imagine); they were simply dividing up its silver revetment as booty. They seem to have completely ignored the rich programme of mosaics and frescoes that decorated the church.
In this, they were not alone. Long after the church was converted to a mosque – which occurred sometime before 1511, after which it came to be known as the Kariye Camii – its interior decoration was left intact. Stefan Gerlach, a German ambassador, visited the mosque in the late 16th century and described the painted decoration in detail, noting only that a few faces, close to the viewer, had been scratched away.2
Away from the city centre and well off the beaten track, the building and its Byzantine decorations survived the Ottoman centuries (1453–1923) in obscurity. Rediscovered with the advent of Western tourism, the Kariye became known as the ‘Mosaic Mosque’ for its rich programme of mosaics – a must-see stop on the touristic itinerary, before visiting the dancing dervishes.
By the mid-20th century, the mosque was virtually abandoned and falling to pieces. Converted to a museum in 1945, the building and its abundant decorations were lovingly restored by the Byzantine Institute of America and the Dumbarton Oaks Field Committee between 1948 and 1958. Until recently, the museum was one of the most popular in Istanbul. Its mosaics bristle with beauty and elegance – all thanks to the building’s knowledgeable and involved patron, Theodore Metochites, prime minister of the Byzantine Empire in the early decades of the 14th century and the greatest intellectual of his age. He provided both ‘hothouse conditions’ for the artisans as well as an unlimited budget. The surviving mosaics are complemented by extensive cladding in coloured marbles and a brilliantly painted funeral chapel – the latter uncovered in pristine condition in the 1950s. Not only is the art of the highest quality, it represents the most extensive Byzantine decorative programme to survive in Istanbul – justly compared to the contemporary artistry of Giotto or Duccio in Italy.
Unlike Hagia Sophia – which was very much in the news in 2020 because of its conversion from a museum to a mosque – the Kariye never held a significant political role during the Ottoman period. No important events took place there; no one important was buried there after the Byzantine period. Thus, it confounded everyone when, on 21 August 2020, President Erdoğan announced that the Kariye Museum, too, would be reopened as a mosque. There was no historical rationale, nor any public call, for this conversion. The transformation makes no sense at all – except in that the building represents the last of the Byzantine churches to have been converted to mosques and subsequently to museums in the city. Rather than reclaiming an important historical artifact of the Ottoman period – as one might argue for the case of Hagia Sophia – the re-conversion of the Kariye represents no less than a blatant attempt to erase Istanbul’s rich Byzantine heritage. As of this writing, however, the Kariye is closed – and its fate remains uncertain.
It is worth remembering that the Byzantine Empire no longer exists. The year 1453 marked its end. One wonders why Mr. Erdoğan continues to fight a battle the Ottoman Turks won more than half a millennium ago, rather than addressing the more crucial problems his country now faces.
If nothing else, the threatened conversion of the Kariye has brought renewed scholarly interest, resulting in several recent symposia and the present volume, which derives from a virtual gathering of scholars in April 2021, “Biography of a Landmark. The Chora Monastery and Kariye Camii in Constantinople/Istanbul from Late Antiquity to the 21st Century,” organized at the University of Fribourg by Michele Bacci, Alessandra Ricci, and Manuela Studer-Karlen.
I first became involved with the Chora as a graduate student in the late 1970s, when I undertook a dissertation – sight unseen – on its architecture (Fig. 1.1).3
This was the academic equivalent of a blind date, but, as I happily discovered, the building possessed both beauty and brains: the thrill of my first viewing has never faded. The building continues to fascinate: each visit reveals something new, often unexpected – a tribute to the Chora’s underlying intelligence. I have returned to the Chora innumerable times throughout my career, in lectures, in publications, and, of course, in person. Still my favorite is to discuss the building and its decoration in situ with friends, colleagues, and students, enveloped by its magnificent art.
View of Chora Church/Kariye Camii, Istanbul, from the south
Photo: Robert G. Ousterhout
The building has been known to scholars since the 19th century and was of particlar interest to the Russians.4 Wider interest in it developed following the mid-20th-century restoration by the Byzantine Institute of America and the Dumbarton Oaks Field Committee. The examination and documentation conducted at that time resulted in the massive three-volume publication by Paul A. Underwood, which appeared in 1966, supplemented by an edited volume of essays in 1975. These superseded all previous publications and still stand as a historiographic landmark.5
Since that time, a long article by Øystein Hjort has examined the sculpture, and my own Dumbarton Oaks Studies monograph has addressed the architecture.6 A variety of other studies have dealt with special aspects of the art and architecture and with the career of its patron. Several museum exhibitions have been organized in the United States and in Istanbul – by Holger Klein and Brigitte Pitarakis, as well as the present author – re-examining the project of the 1950s and its legacy, with related conferences, catalogues, and collected essays appearing between 2004 and 2011.7
There has also been renewed interest in the writings of Theodore Metochites, with a variety of his texts being published or discussed for the first time.8 Of course, the sensibilities evident in the writing offer clues to the appreciation of the style and organization of the Chora, including its architecture and art.9 They also help us to understand the political and scholarly concerns of the author.10
With so much already written about the Chora, one wonders if there is anything new to say. I certainly did, when invited to speak at the workshop that formed the basis for this volume. I had begun to think I should open any new essay on the Chora by saying “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before” – there’s a danger of repeating oneself too often, which I tend to do. Only after I’d begged off did I begin to realize that there is always something new to say about the Chora, as speakers at the conference demonstrated. The building and its art invite us to return again and again.
Among the new things I’ve learned from the symposium, perhaps most surprising is a new dating. Thanks to the expert sleuthing of Kostis Smyrlis, the generally accepted date for the restoration of the Chora (c.1315–21) should be adjusted half a decade earlier: the project was certainly completed before 1317, when its patron Theodore Metochites is first referred to as Megas Logothetes, a title he received only after the completion of the work at the Chora.11 The title does not appear in the numerous inscriptions in the building; instead, he is identified simply as Logothete or Logothete of the Genikon. Moreover, Metochites was wealthy and thus in a position to refound the monastery considerably earlier than has been assumed. The revised date places the activity at the Chora much closer chronologically to the construction and decoration of the parekklesion at Pammakaristos Monastery (c.1310), which may have been a product of the same workshop.12
For those of us who thought we were celebrating the 700th anniversay of the completion of Metochites’s project in 2021, this came as a shock – we were too late! We had assumed its date was fixed and immutable. But this wasn’t the first time scholars were misled by the evidence. More than a century ago, Alexander Van Millingen read a decorative detail – no more than squiggles in an arched doorway, within the scene of the Wedding at Cana – as representing the Arabic numerals 6811, thus rendering a date of 1303.13 This date, though frequently repeated, was disproved by Underwood in a lengthy rebuttal.14 Instead, he posited a dating between 1315 and 1320/21 as most likely – which most of us accepted, until now.
Turning to the later history of the building and its use under the Ottomans, M. Baha Tanman demonstrated the promise of a deep dive into the Ottoman archives.15 From the titles assigned to documents, he has identified several related to the Kariye. For example, he notes a curious incident of the theft of mosaics, recorded in 1870, as well as Kaiser Wilhelm II’s documented visit to the building in 1898. There are mentions of restorations in 1875, 1893, 1896, and 1929.
An Ottoman survey of Istanbul, compiled in 1455 for Mehmed II, indicates the Chora monastery was abandoned at that time.16 Much earlier data about the Chora was recently discovered in the archives of Vatopedi Monastery.17 An Ottoman document records that Mara Branković (daughter of George Branković and wife of Murad II) purchased the Chora monastery shortly before her death in 1487.18 In that year, she bequeathed the monastic complex to Vatopedi as a metochion. The text mentions an enclosure, and within it, an oblong building and twenty-four monks’ cells; outside the enclosure, a windmill with an oven and a storehouse, as well as vineyards nearby. By the first decade of the 16th century, however, the church building had been converted into a mosque. This new information about the Byzantine ‘afterlife’ of the monastery has encouraged a reconsideration of its later history, including the dating of the tombs added in the parekklesion and outer narthex.19
Another area of interest is how the building might have been used liturgically during the Byzantine period. Considering its unusual, irregular plan, the tracking of liturgical movements within is not an easy task, as Paul Magdalino discussed in an unpublished paper (Fig. 1.2).20
Plan of Chora Church/Kariye Camii, Istanbul
Plan: Robert G. Ousterhout
For example, a typical cross-in-square church would have had three entrances to the sanctuary: a central one to the bema, and lateral ones opening from the side bays into the pastophoria. But the open design of the Chora naos (usually termed an ‘atrophied Greek-cross plan’) would not allow this, as the prothesis is not directly accessible to the naos. Thus, Magdalino suggests, processions could have utilized the north annex (which connects the prothesis and the inner narthex) to re-enter the narthex for the Eucharistic liturgy. This would have added to the drama of the Great Entrance: the celebrants would disappear from view in the bema, only to reappear at the entrance to the naos, bearing the bread and wine.
This proposed path of movement might also help to explain something of the narrative arrangement of the Infancy of the Virgin in the inner narthex, a cycle which begins in the northernmost bay. That is, liturgical movement and narrative movement would have complemented each other. Similarly, I add, the arrangement of the narratives in the exonarthex begins at the north extreme, where a door connects to other (now lost) monastic buildings, probably including the trapeza.21 Thus, the entrance of the monks from the monastery may have also reflected the movements of the narratives.
Of course, there is much more to learn from close observation of the mosaics and wall paintings, particularly as the building is in the midst of a comprehensive restoration under the direction of the Central Conservation and Restoration Laboratory in Istanbul.22 One question that still intrigues me is the style of the Chora. This was expertly addressed years ago by Otto Demus, whose analysis remains unsurpassed.23 I have, in turn, used his study – with a touch of postmodernism – to explain the architectural style.24 The conversation about style is far from finished, and I am hoping my colleague Robert Nelson will rise to the challenge. Style has fallen out of fashion among art historians, being superseded in the 1970s by social history and a more Marxist reading of art. Indeed, many found Demus’s analysis to be already out of date when it appeared in 1975. How should the present-day scholar think about style, and do we have the necessary vocabulary to talk about it? Demus was taken to task for using terminology associated with more recent period styles (such as ‘mannerist’ or ‘cubist’) to describe developments in Late Byzantine painting. For the visually oriented, however, these terms call to mind specific stylistic associations that make sense – nevermind that Picasso had nothing to do with Macedonian painting. Still, it is hard to talk about the Chora and its art without a discussion of style, for its evocative style is as significant in conveying its meaning as is its iconography – both intimately connected to the mindset of Theodore Metochites.25
Iconography continues to fascinate, although most of the recent discussion continues to focus on its relationship to the liturgy and contemporary religious thought.26 The iconography of the programme at the Chora may be just as solidly connected to the writings of Metochites.27 Indeed, the building and its art have been interpreted as self-extensions of the founder.28 Metochites quite literally inserted himself into the programme, and his imperial pretentions are also evident in what has been termed its ‘intervisuality’ with Hagia Sophia.29 Metochites’s portrait continues to attract attention.30 Other historical figures represented in the mosaics have garnered interest as well, including a previous donor and a previous founder. Prince Isaakios Komnenos, brother of John II Komnenos and a remarkable character as a patron of literature and art and one of the notorious bad boys of Byzantium, refounded the church in the 12th century and is represented in the Deesis mosaic.31 Opposite Isaakios is a female figure, identified as ‘the Lady of the Mongols, the nun Melane’: another curious historical figure – an illegitimate princess married off to the Mongol khan – she is known to have donated a Gospel book to the Chora.32 With growing interest in female patronage, I believe her role at the Chora has been exaggerated. More than anything, she fulfils a rhetorical function in the decorative programme, part of the ‘gender symmetry’ that promotes the role of the Theotokos in the economy of salvation and the dual dedication of the monastery.33 Images of Christ are invariably balanced by pendant images of the Theotokos; the Infancy of Christ in the outer narthex is mirrored by the Infancy of the Virgin in the inner narthex; and miracles involving men are paralleled by those involving women.34
Just as fascinating as who is represented in the Chora is who is not. Emperor Andronikos II, for example, who gave the commission and encouragement to Metochites and may have contributed financially to the renovation project, is nowhere to be seen, and there is really nowhere to fit him into the programme, aside perhaps from his titular saint in the exonarthex.35 And although both the building and its decoration appear to engage in a dialogue with the past, it is Theodore Metochites who is doing all the talking. He honoured his predecessors, Isaakios and Melane, and respected their contributions to the monastery, but in the final analysis, they are included in the programme to honour him. The space opposite Metochites in the donor image is conspicuously empty. Metochites could place himself on equal footing with the emperor’s illegitimate half-sister, or with a distant, disgraced ancestor, but he would always have to play second fiddle to Andronikos. In the Chora, he could express his imperial pretentions – but only to a certain point, beyond which they could have been seen as seditious.36
I’ve started to repeat myself yet again, so this is a good place to bring this essay to a close. Clearly, there has been much written about the Chora, but there is still much to be written. Each generation, I suspect, arrives with fresh eyes, new questions, and new methodologies. In sum, the Chora, its art, its history, and its patronage present us with an excellent case study to “think with” about the Late Byzantine world. The Chora provide a useful lens through which to view Byzantine culture – not simply its art and architecture, but also its literature, theology, ideology, and even urbanism. Just as important, its rich historiography also allows us to revisit our own growth as a scholarly field, offering a reassessment of how we read and how we see.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Michael Ducas. Historia Turco-Bizantina, edited by Vasile Grecu. Bucharest, 1958.
Stefan Gerlach. Stefan Gerlachs dess Aeltern Tage-Buch. Frankfurt, 1674.
Theodore Metochites. On Morals or Concerning Education, translated by Sophia Xenophontos (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library). Cambridge, Mass., 2020.
Secondary Sources
Boeck, Elena. “First Encounters of a Chora Kind: Nikodim Kondakov and the Emancipation of Byzantine Art,” in Afterlives of Byzantine Monuments in Post-Byzantine Times, edited by Elena Boeck, pp. 201–217. Bucharest, 2021.
Demus, Otto, “The Style of the Kariye Djami and Its Place in the Development of Palaeologan Art,” in The Kariye Djami. vol. 4, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background, edited by Paul A. Underwood, pp. 107–160. Princeton, N.J., 1975.
Hjort, Øystein. “The Sculpture of the Kariye Camii.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979), 199–289.
Inalcik, Halil. The Survey of Istanbul 1455: The Text, English Translation, Analysis of the Text, Documents. Istanbul, 2013.
Kazhdan, Alexander. “Komnenos, Isaac the Porphyrogennetos,” in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 2:1146. Oxford, 1991.
Kermanidis, Markos. Episteme und Ästhetik der Raummodellierung in Literatur und Kunst des Theodore Metochites. Berlin, 2020.
Kiilerich, Bente. “Aesthetic Aspects of Palaiologan Art in Constantinople: Some Problems,” in Interaction and Isolation in Late Byzantine Culture, edited by Jan O. Rosenqvist, pp. 11–26. Stockholm, 2004.
Klein, Holger A., and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds. Restoring Byzantium: The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration, exh. cat. New York, 2004.
Klein, Holger, A., Robert G. Ousterhout, and Brigitte Pitarakis, eds. Kariye: From Theodore Metochites to Thomas Whittemore; One Monument, Two Monumental Personalities. Istanbul, 2007.
Klein, Holger, A., Robert G. Ousterhout, and Brigitte Pitarakis, eds. Kariye Camii, Yeniden [The Kariye Camii Reconsidered]. Istanbul, 2011.
Kondakov, Nikodim P. Mozaiki Mecheti Kakhrie-dzhamisi v Konstantinopole [Mosaics of the mosque of Kariye Cami in Constantinople]. Odessa, 1881.
Kotzageorgis, Phokion P. “Two Vakfiyes of Mara Brankovic,” Hilandarski Zbornik 11 (2004), 307–322.
Krustev, Georgi. “A Poem of Maria Comnene Palaeologina from Manuscript No. 177 of the Ivan Dujčev Centre for Slavo-Byzantine Studies,” Byzantinoslavica 58 (1997), 71–77.
Lefort, Jacques, et al. Actes de Vatopédi III. De 1377 à 1500. Paris, 2019.
Magdalino, Paul. The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos 1143–1180. Cambridge, 2002.
Magdalino, Paul. “The Chora Katholikon: A typical or extraordinary Byzantine monument?” Presented at the symposium “Biography of a Landmark,” April 2021.
Magdalino, Paul, “Theodore Metochites, the Chora, and Constantinople,” in Kariye Camii, Yeniden [The Kariye Camii Reconsidered], edited by Holger A. Klein, Robert G. Ousterhout, and Brigitte Pitarakis, pp. 169–187. Istanbul, 2011.
Melvani, Nicholas. “The Last Century of the Chora Monastery: A New Look at the Tomb Monuments,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 114 (2021), 1219–1240.
Nelson, Robert S. “Taxation with Representation. Visual Narrative and the Political Field of the Kariye Camii,” Art History 22 (1999), 56–82.
Nelson, Robert S. “The Chora and the Great Church: Intervisuality in Fourteenth- Century Constantinople,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 23 (1999), 67–101.
Ousterhout, Robert G. “The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1982.
Ousterhout, Robert G. “A Sixteenth-Century Visitor to the Chora,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), 117–124.
Ousterhout, Robert G. The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 25). Washington, D.C., 1987.
Ousterhout, Robert G. “Temporal Structuring in the Chora Parekklesion,” Gesta 34/1 (1995), 63–76.
Ousterhout, Robert G. “The Virgin of the Chora: An Image and Its Contexts,” in The Sacred Image East and West, edited by Leslie Brubaker, and Robert G. Ousterhout, pp. 91–108 (Urbana, Ill., 1995).
Ousterhout, Robert G. “Contextualizing the Later Churches of Constantinople: Suggested Methodologies and a Few Examples,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000), 241–250.
Ousterhout, Robert G. The Art of the Kariye Camii. Istanbul/London, 2002.
Ousterhout, Robert G. “Reading Difficult Buildings: The Lessons of the Kariye Camii,” in Kariye Camii, Yeniden [The Kariye Camii Reconsidered], edited by Holger A. Klein, Robert G. Ousterhout, and Brigitte Pitarakis, pp. 95–128. Istanbul, 2011.
Ousterhout, Robert G. Finding a Place in History: The Chora Monastery and Its Patrons. Nicosia, 2017.
Schroeder, Rossitza. “Prayer and Penance in the South Bay of the Chora Esonarthex,” Gesta 48 (2009), 37–53.
Ševčenko, Ihor, “Theodore Metochites, the Chora, and the Intellectual Trends of His Time,” The Kariye Djami. vol. 4, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background, edited by Paul A. Underwood, pp. 19–55. Princeton, N.J., 1975.
Ševčenko, Nancy P. “The Portrait of Theodore Metochites at Chora,” in Donations et Donateurs dans le monde byzantin, edited by Jean-Michel Spieser, and Elisabeth Yota, pp. 189–205. Paris, 2012.
Sherry, Lee F. “The Poem of Maria Komnene Palaiologina to the Virgin and Mother of God, the Chorine,” Cahiers Archéologiques 43 (1995), 181–182.
Shmit, Fedor I. Kakhrie-dzhami, Izvestiia Russkago Arkheologicheskago Instituta v Konstantinopole 11 [Kariye Cami, Bulletin of Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople]. Sofia/Munich, 1906.
Smyrlis, Kostis. “Contextualizing Theodore Metochites and His Refoundation of the Chora,” Revue des études Byzantines 80 (2022), 69–111.
Teteriatnikov, Natalia. “The Place of the Nun Melania (the Lady of the Mongols) in the Deesis Program of the Inner Narthex of Chora, Constantinople,” Cahiers Archéologiques 43 (1995), 163–180.
Underwood, Paul A. The Kariye Djami, 3 vols. New York, 1966.
Underwood, Paul A., ed. The Kariye Djami. vol. 4, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background. Princeton, N.J., 1975.
Van Millingen, Alexander, Byzantine Churches of Constantinople: Their History and Architecture. London, 1912.
Varzos, Konstantinos. Η Γενεαλογία των Κομνηνών [The Genealogy of the Komnenoi]. Thessaloniki, 1984.
Michael Ducas, Historia Turco-Bizantina, ed. Vasile Grecu (Bucharest, 1958), p. 363.
Stefan Gerlach, Stefan Gerlachs dess Aeltern Tage-Buch (Frankfurt, 1674), pp. 455–56; Robert G. Ousterhout, “A Sixteenth-Century Visitor to the Chora,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), 117–24.
Robert G. Ousterhout, “The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1982).
See the recent assessment of Elena Boeck, “First Encounters of a Chora Kind: Nikodim Kondakov and the Emancipation of Byzantine Art,” in Afterlives of Byzantine Monuments in Post-Byzantine Times, ed. Elena Boeck (Bucharest, 2021), pp. 201–17. Nikodim P. Kondakov, Mozaiki Mecheti Kakhrie-dzhamisi v Konstantinopole [Mosaics of the mosque of Kariye Cami in Constantinople] (Odessa, 1881); Fedor I. Shmit, Kakhrie-dzhami, Izvestiia Russkago Arkheologicheskago Instituta v Konstantinopole 11 [Kariye Cami, Bulletin of Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople] (Sofia/Munich, 1906).
Paul A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 3 vols (New York, 1966); idem, ed., The Kariye Djami, vol. 4, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background (Princeton, N.J., 1975); these were preceded by regular annual reports in Dumbarton Oaks Papers.
Øystein Hjort, “The Sculpture of the Kariye Camii,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979), 199–289; Robert G. Ousterhout, The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 25 (Washington, D.C., 1987). I have also addressed the subject in several articles and two short monographs; see idem, “Temporal Structuring in the Chora Parekklesion,” Gesta 34/1 (1995), 63–76; idem, “The Virgin of the Chora: An Image and Its Contexts,” in The Sacred Image East and West, ed. Leslie Brubaker, and idem (Urbana, Ill., 1995), pp. 91–108; idem, The Art of the Kariye Camii (Istanbul/London, 2002); idem, Finding a Place in History: The Chora Monastery and Its Patrons (Nicosia, 2017).
Holger A. Klein, and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds., Restoring Byzantium: The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration, exh. cat. (New York, 2004); Holger A. Klein, Robert G. Ousterhout, and Brigitte Pitarakis, eds., Kariye: From Theodore Metochites to Thomas Whittemore; One Monument, Two Monumental Personalities (Istanbul, 2007); Hoger A. Klein, Robert G. Ousterhout, and Brigitte Pitarakis, Kariye Camii, Yeniden [The Kariye Camii Reconsidered] (Istanbul, 2011).
See most recently, Theodore Metochites, On Morals or Concerning Education, trans. Sophia Xenophontos, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, Mass., 2020), pp. 279–82, with extensive bibliography of editions, translations, and studies of Metochites’s writings.
For a recent attempt, see Markos Kermanidis, Episteme und Ästhetik der Raummodellierung in Literatur und Kunst des Theodore Metochites (Berlin, 2020).
Ihor Ševčenko, “Theodore Metochites, the Chora, and the Intellectual Trends of His Time,” in Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami, pp. 19–55, remains foundational.
See Kostis Smyrlis, “Contextualizing Theodore Metochites and his Refoundation of the Chora,” Revue des études Byzantines 80 (2022), 69–111. For the dedicatory inscription, see Underwood, Kariye Djami, 1:42–43.
As I suggested long ago, in Ousterhout, Architecture, pp. 119–20.
Alexander Van Millingen, Byzantine Churches of Constantinople: Their History and Architecture (London, 1912), p. 300.
Underwood, Kariye Djami, 1:15–16.
See in the present volume M. Baha Tanman, “The Adjustment of Chora Monastery to Ottoman Use.”
Halil Inalcik, The Survey of Istanbul 1455: The Text, English Translation, Analysis of the Text, Documents (Istanbul, 2013), p. 310.
Jacques Lefort, et al., Actes de Vatopédi III. De 1377 à 1500 (Paris, 2019), pp. 439–40. I thank Nicholas Melvani for this information.
Phokion P. Kotzageorgis, “Two Vakfiyes of Mara Brankovic,” Hilandarski Zbornik 11 (2004), 307–22, esp. 221 and fig. 3.
See, for example, Nicholas Melvani, “The Last Century of the Chora Monastery: A New Look at the Tomb Monuments,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 114 (2021), 1219–40.
Paul Magdalino, “The Chora Katholikon: A typical or extraordinary Byzantine monument?” presented at the symposium “Biography of a Landmark,” April 2021. I am grateful to the author for sharing the paper with me.
See my suggestions, in Robert G. Ousterhout, “Contextualizing the Later Churches of Constantinople: Suggested Methodologies and a Few Examples,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000), 241–50.
I am grateful to Dr. Olcay Aydemir for numerous discusssions about the ongoing work, in March 2020.
Otto Demus, “The Style of the Kariye Djami and Its Place in the Development of Palaeologan Art,” in Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami, pp. 107–60, originally written for the 1958 International Byzantine Congress. I am grateful to Robert S. Nelson for many conversations on the subject. See also Bente Kiilerich, “Aesthetic Aspects of Palaiologan Art in Constantinople: Some Problems,” in Interaction and Isolation in Late Byzantine Culture, ed. Jan O. Rosenqvist (Stockholm, 2004), pp. 11–26.
Robert G. Ousterhout, “Reading Difficult Buildings: The Lessons of the Kariye Camii,” in Kariye Camii, Yeniden, pp. 95–128.
Kermanidis, Episteme und Ästhetik, passim.
For example, Rossitza Schroeder, “Prayer and Penance in the South Bay of the Chora Esonarthex,” Gesta 48 (2009), 37–53.
See for a recent example, Nektarios Zarras, “Illness and Healing: The Ministry Cycle in the Chora Monastery and the Literary Oeuvre of Theodore Metochites,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 75 (2021), 85–120.
Paul Magdalino, “Theodore Metochites, the Chora, and Constantinople,” in Kariye Camii, Yeniden, pp. 169–87, esp. 170–71.
Robert S. Nelson, “Taxation with Representation. Visual Narrative and the Political Field of the Kariye Camii,” Art History 22 (1999), 56–82; idem, “The Chora and the Great Church: Intervisuality in Fourteenth-Century Constantinople,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 23 (1999), 67–101.
Nancy P. Ševčenko, “The Portrait of Theodore Metochites at Chora,” in Donations et donateurs dans le monde byzantin, ed. Jean-Michel Spieser, and Elisabeth Yota (Paris, 2012), pp. 189–205.
For the life of Isaak, see Alexander Kazhdan, “Komnenos, Isaac the Porphyrogennetos,” in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford, 1991), 2:1146; Paul Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos 1143–1180 (Cambridge, 2002), passim; Konstantinos Varzos,
Georgi Krustev, “A Poem of Maria Comnene Palaeologina from Manuscript No. 177 of the Ivan Dujčev Centre for Slavo-Byzantine Studies,” Byzantinoslavica 58 (1997), 71–77, esp. 73–75; Natalia Teteriatnikov, “The Place of the Nun Melania (the Lady of the Mongols) in the Deesis Program of the Inner Narthex of Chora, Constantinople,” Cahiers Archéologiques 43 (1995), 163–80, esp. 177–78; Lee F. Sherry, “The Poem of Maria Komnene Palaiologina to the Virgin and Mother of God, the Chorine,” Cahiers Archéologiques 43 (1995), 181–82.
Underwood, Kariye Djami, 1:27; Ousterhout, Art of the Kariye, 104.
As I argue in Ousterhout, Finding a Place in History, pp. 27–29, 53–55.
Magdalino, “Theodore Metochites,” pp. 179–81.
Ousterhout, Finding a Place in History, pp. 53–55.