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Source:
Assn. for Croatian Studies
- Bulletin 37, Fall 2001 |
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A Croatian Chapel Full of
Sculpture Now that peace has been restored in Croatia, the world is rediscovering the architectural gems in the towns on Croatia's Istrian and Dalmatian coasts on the Adriatic Sea. The British architect Robert Adam awakened interest in the area in 1764, when he collaborated on a book about the ruins of the fourth-century palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in Split. That classical complex has inspired Western architects ever since, from Palladio to Thomas Jefferson. This summer another masterpiece on Croatia's Adriatic coast is being celebrated: the Renaissance Chapel of the Blessed Giovanni Orsini in the Cathedral of Trogir, a small city a few miles north of Split. The Orsini Chapel is widely considered the most beautiful and sumptuous Renaissance monument in Dalmatia. The chapel is being restored by Sansovino Restorers of Venice with a $500,000 grant from Venetian Heritage Inc., a New York-based, nonprofit foundation that finances restoration projects in Venice and elsewhere in the former empire. Lawrence Lovett, the current chairman, and Khalil Rizk, the late director of the Chinese Porcelain Company, created the foundation in New York in 1999. "The chapel is an example par excellence of the cooperation between the two peoples of the two Adriatic shores," Mr. Lovett said. "The stone from which Venice is largely built, for example, came largely from Istria. Dalmatian artists studied and worked in Venice; Venetian artists made careers in Dalmatia." The chapel's designer and chief architect and sculptor was Niccolo di Giovanni, a Florentine active in Venice in the middle of the 15th century, who lived in Dalmatia from 1467 until his death about 1507. Anne Markham Schulz, a visiting scholar at Brown University, who wrote a 1978 book on Niccolo, considers him one of the great geniuses of Italian Renaissance sculpture. "In the late 1450's and 1460's, before he went to Trogir, he was the chief sculptor of Venice, so it was logical that the community who commissioned the chapel would have looked to Venice to find someone for such an important project," she said. "He spent the rest of his life working on the chapel." Niccolo's barrel-vaulted limestone chapel is packed with sculpture. It has niches for life-size freestanding statues of the 12 Apostles as well as Christ, the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. More than 100 angels adorn the columns and the vault. The lunette has a stone relief of the Coronation of the Virgin. A 14th-century shrine at the altar contains the bones of Orsini, a Roman bishop sent to Trogir, who died in 1111. After his death many miracles were attributed to him; he was beatified at the end of the 12th century and became the patron saint of Trogir. During the restoration work on the chapel, Venetian Heritage organized a show of the Trogir Cathedral's treasures in Venice at the Church of San Barnaba near the Accademia museum (until Nov. 4). Titled "Treasures of Croatia," the show documents the artistic links between Venice and the eastern Adriatic, with medieval reliquaries and liturgical vessels in gold and silver, Renaissance paintings, sculptures, vestments and manuscripts from the 12th through the 16th century. Most of the works come from Trogir and its environs. Some Italian artworks have been included for comparative purposes. Peter Lauritzen, an American expert on Venetian history, said the show was one of the most important ever mounted there in his experience. "It opens our eyes to the influence of Venetian art overseas, but also documents important, little- studied links between ancient Dalmatia and 15th-century papal patronage involving the sculpture and architecture of the Florentine Renaissance," he said. "The catalog will prove a point of reference for generations of scholarship to come." Toto Bergamo Rossi, the head of Sansovino Restorers, was in charge of the restoration. "I worked like a dog for eight months," he said. "I took architecture students to work with the superintendent of monuments of Split on the conservation of the stone in the Orsini Chapel, which involved painstakingly removing centuries of soot and candle grease." He then addressed the chapel's treasures. "The objects are of the first quality, so we had to find appropriate restorers," he said. "A 15th-century polychrome sculpture of the Virgin and Child, for example, was laboriously cleaned in Florence. The reliquaries were sent to Vienna because the Viennese are so good working with silver gilt and gold objects." There were some amazing discoveries. A 15th-century painting of St. Jerome, the hermit scholar, on the Trogir Cathedral's organ has now been attributed to the workshop of Jacopo Bellini, the father of Giovanni Bellini, the most revered painter of 15th-century Venice. In style, it is very close to the paintings of the saints on the organ of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice by Gentile Bellini, Giovanni's brother, which are now in the Museo Marciano in Venice. Gentile went to Istanbul to work in the Ottoman court of Muhammad II. Did he paint the Trogir organ door? A polychrome stone statue of the archangel Gabriel, circa 1330, from Trogir Cathedral, signed by Maestro Mauro, is uncannily similar in pose, facial modeling, carved drapery and silhouette to a marble angel made for an Annunciation in St. Mark's in Venice about 1335. It is attributed to a Venetian follower of Marco Romano. Did Mauro do both sculptures? "The work was very achieved, not rustic at all," said Ariane Dandois, a Paris antiques dealer who saw the exhibition in Venice. "The show made me decide to visit Croatia next year." She has a point. In 1997 Trogir was designated a Unesco World Heritage site. "Trogir is a Gothic and Renaissance island city that is virtually untouched," Mr. Lovett said. Because of its strategic location, it has been occupied, on and off, since at least the fourth century B.C. Venice's turn came in 1000. By then Venice had become such a powerful city-state and trading power on the western side of the Adriatic that it took control of the Dalmatian coast to protect its traders from pirates and keep open the shipping lanes in the eastern Adriatic. By 1420, Venetian domination of the Croatian coast was complete. Venice largely controlled the Adriatic until the empire fell in 1797. Much of Renaissance Venice was built with Istrian and Dalmatian stone, whose quality had been praised since Roman times. "It was plentiful, cheap and easily transportable by ship," Mr. Rossi said. "Istrian stone was ideal for Venice: unlike marble, it resists humidity and salt." The eastern Adriatic cities, in turn, became repositories of late medieval, Renaissance and Baroque art. "The exchange went in both directions," Ms. Schulz said. "Istrian sculptors came to Venice, and starting in the 14th century, Venetians went to Istria and the Dalmatian coast." The exchange continues. (New York Times, September 7, 2001) |
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