published by Press, which produces, markets, at the Hermitage, in St. Petersburg, is creating a comprehensive and distributes publications. catalog of that collection, incorporating information from recent Several current fellows are working on projects that will be- analysis of the icons using new technical methods. come resources for future scholars. Nadezhda Kavrus-Ho≠mann, Dumbarton Oaks also underwrites the development of Byzan- an independent scholar from New York who was a fellow last tine scholarship directly. Eustratios Papaioannou, another former fall, is creating the very first catalog of Greek manuscripts from fellow now translating the letters of Byzantine historian and the Byzantine period in the : traveling among the philosopher Michael Psellos, is Dumbarton Oaks assistant profes- libraries that hold the manuscripts and in some cases discover- sor of Byzantine studies in the classics department at Brown Uni- ing texts whose existence had escaped notice. Current fellow versity. The appointment is jointly funded by the two entities, en- Yuri Pyatnitsky, senior curator for the Byzantine icon collection abling Papaioannou to spend two years teaching at Brown and

sold to di≠erent owners over the years; the Blisses reassem- bled several parcels into their own 53-acre plot. Visionary Donors They made their gift to Harvard sooner than they had origi- nally planned. In 1940, as World War II consumed Europe and obert bliss died in 1962, Mildred Bliss in 1969, threatened to draw in the United States, they turned over to but the benefactors of Dumbarton Oaks still cast a the University 16 acres, including the main house, gardens, R long shadow over their former home. It’s not just and their collections and library. “Dumbarton Oaks is now that the Blisses left behind their home and all their belongings. ready to increase its contribution to the intellectual life of the The estate’s later caretakers have inscribed their words on nation,” Robert Bliss told the Washington Times-Herald. They also plaques; sta≠ members mention their names frequently; and gave 27 acres to the National Park Service, which made the people occasionally report seeing Mrs. Bliss walking about in land into Dumbarton Oaks Park, and sold 10 acres to the Dan- the gardens. Indeed, the estate’s very name comes from the ish government for an embassy complex. They had lived at the Blisses, who combined its first recorded name—taken from estate only since 1933, and for just 10 years in all, having the Rock of Dumbarton in Scotland, the homeland of early bought it while Robert Bliss was on a domestic posting, before owner Ninian Beall—and a name from a later period, when it being sent to Sweden and Argentina. was called simply “The Oaks.” With the gift, Harvard received 1,200 Byzantine objects, as Robert Woods Bliss, A.B. 1900, a career diplomat, and Mil- well as 17,000 Byzantine coins and 800 pieces of pre- dred Barnes Bliss, heiress to a laxative fortune and the niece Columbian art. The Blisses “had no aspiration to be scholars, of , had spent two decades overseas during his but they had quite good taste,” says Dumbarton Oaks director postings to Venice, St. Pe- Jan M. Ziolkowski. “Col- tersburg, , Buenos lecting was a serious busi- Aires, , and the Hague. ness for them.” In 1920, they were looking Many have noted similar- for a home base in Wash- ities to I Tatti, the estate ington, but they also had near Florence that was left grand aspirations for their to Harvard in 1959 by Ber- estate. They envisioned a nard Berenson, A.B. 1887, as place for scholarly studies a center for Renaissance and musical performances, studies. Besides a research and a home for the fine art library, that estate o≠ers and ancient artifacts they artworks, gardens, and olive had assiduously collected. groves—a set of resources And they had notions of for well-rounded scholars of eventually giving all of it to the humanities. The I Tatti Harvard. gardens feature pebble mo- A history of Dumbarton saics; Mildred Bliss con- Oaks records Robert Bliss’s verted a former tennis court words upon seeing the at Dumbarton Oaks into a property for the first time: pebble mosaic in 1961. And “though it had no particular just as the Blisses’ ashes are charm and the grounds interred in the Dumbarton were unkempt and in places Oaks gardens, Berenson and much overgrown, the beau- his wife are buried in a tiful trees gave promise of chapel at I Tatti. The simi- Robert and Mildred Bliss, possibilities to a gardener.” during his diplomatic larities are not coincidental: Beall’s Georgetown estate posting to Sweden the Blisses and the Beren- had been divided up and in the 1920s sons were friends.

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