FRANCESCA DELL’ACQUA BOYVADAOG˘LU Constantinople 1453: the Patriarch Gennadios, Mehmet the II and the Serpent Column in the Hippodrome A lavishly illustrated, late sixteenth-century Ottoman chronicle called the Hünernâme, i.e. the Book of Skills, shows the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II ›el-Fātiḥ‹ (›the Conqueror‹ of Constantinople) hitting the Serpent Column in the Hippo- drome in front of the Greek monk Gennadios, who vehemently reacts (fi g. 1). The Serpent Column, also known as the Delphic Tripod, had since the fourth century CE played a focal role among the public ornaments displayed in the Hippodrome, which was the core of public life in the late antique, Byzantine and Ottoman city (fi g. 2).1 As many written, oral and visual sources testify, it is an extremely signifi - cant example of how the value and the identity of an object can be shaped by hu- man perception; and, conversely, an example of how an object can contribute to the shaping of the image of a city. Recent literature has addressed the archaeology, the visual tradition, and even the folklore related to this bronze monument of the * A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 45th International Congress of Medie- val Studies at Kalamazoo in May 2010, thanks to a travel grant awarded by the ICMA (Inter- national Center of Medieval Art, The Cloisters, NYC), and at the Istanbul Technical Universi- ty during an Erasmus Teaching Staff Mobility during the a. y. 2011-2012. For the sake of brev- ity, the footnotes will only address essential material, postponing for another occasion a full- length discussion of a number of issues. I wish to express my gratitude for suggestions and help to the following colleagues: Aygül Ağır, John Burke, Fulvio Cervini, Tony Cutler, Carlo Donà, Vlastimil Drbal, Emine Fetvacı, Herbert L. Kessler, Liz James, Bente Bjornholt, Thomas F. Madden, Filippo Maria Pontani, Helen Saradi-Mendelovici, Alberto Saviello, the Türk Tarih Kurumu/Turkish Historical Society and Christine Woodhead. I especially wish to thank the historian Paul Stephenson for a generous intellectual exchange about the Serpent Column. To Gerhard, I offer this paper as a symbolic nar (Agropoli, Winter 2011-12). 1 The position the column occupies today is not unanimously recognized to be the original one: see Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, s.v. Hippodrom, in Bildlexikon zur Topografie Istanbuls: Byzantion - Konstantinupolis - Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen 1977, pp. 64-71, esp. p. 65; Thomas F. Madden, »The Serpent Column of Delphi in Constantino- ple: Placement, Purposes, and Mutilations«, in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 16, 1992, pp. 111-145, esp. pp. 112-116; Rudolf H. W. Stichel, »Die ›Schlangensäule‹ im Hip- podrom von Istanbul. Zum spät- und nachantiken Schicksal des Delphischen Votivs der Schlacht von Plataiai«, in Istanbuler Mitteilungen, 47, 1997, pp. 315-348; Paul Stephenson, »Constantijn en de monumentalisering van Constantinopel«, in Constantijn de grote. Traditie en verandering, ed. Olivier Hekster & Corjo Jansen, Nijmegen 2012, pp. 134-155. The seat- ing capacity of the Hippodrome has been calculated at about 30,000 people. See Jonathan Bardill, »The Architecture and Archaeology of the Hippodrome in Constantinople«, in Hip- podrome/Atmeydanı: A Stage for İstanbul’s History, Exhibition Catalogue (Istanbul, Pera Mu- seum, 2010), Istanbul 2010, pp. 91-148, esp. p. 101, fig. 8.8. FF54665466 HHoffmann.inddoffmann.indd 325325 004.03.134.03.13 008:388:38 326 FRANCESCA DELL’ACQUA BOYVADAOĞLU Fig. 1: Hünernâme, Ottoman chronicle, c. 1580. Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı, Ms. H 1523, fol. 162v (photo: Topkapı Palace Museum ©) FF54665466 HHoffmann.inddoffmann.indd 326326 004.03.134.03.13 008:388:38.