- Pages: 208 p.
- Size:216 x 280 mm
- Illustrations:9 b/w, 164 col.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2025
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- ISBN: 978-2-503-61522-6
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (Oct/25)
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- ISBN: 978-2-503-61523-3
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This book follows the dynamics of sculptors' and stonemasons' production from the mid-15th century's embrace of early Renaissance influences to the introduction of Classical architectural language that occasionally breaks with the stylistic canons of artistic centres.
Laris Borić (1969) is an art historian and an associate professor at the Department of Art History at the University of Zadar, Croatia. Primary areas of his academic interest are urban history, architecture and visual arts in Early Modern cities around the Adriatic rim, particularly issues pertaining to the transmission, distribution, and change of ideas and visual concepts and vocabulary. Presently he is also associated with ERC funded research project „Architectural Culture of the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic“
The book investigates the transformation of the architectural and visual language in Zadar, eastern Adriatic town, at the dawn of the early modern era, when the mighty mediaeval commune was being transformed by the emerging governmental structures of the Republic of Venice. These events coincided with the Ottoman Empire's takeover of the hinterland of Dalmatian cities, transforming Zadar into a city on the brink of two worlds.
A highly autonomous mediaeval commune was a lively trans-Adriatic artistic centre, a network of builders, painters, and sculptors from Dalmatia, Venice, Marche and Lombardy, so with the early adoption of humanist concepts by the local elite, this practice continued. However, the transformations the governmental structure and economic policies steadily limited its community autonomy and commercial sources. The crisis worsened in the 16th century, when the local elites lost a large portion of their revenue from the fertile hinterland captured by the Ottoman Empire.
This launched an ongoing militarisation of social structures and fortifying the town. These events were reflected in the fields of architecture and art. The process of adopting a new architectural and artistic language began in the second half of the 15th century, as demonstrated by motifs in architectural decoration and sculpture with impulses from important Dalmatian sculptural and stonemasons’ circles, as well as Venetian models from the circles of Pietro Lombardo and Mauro Codussi. When the new classical language of architecture began spreading in the middle of the 16th century, it expressed mostly in the renovation of administrative structures, with occasional departures from the stylistic canons of artistic centres.
Foreword by Jasenka Gudelj
Introduction: In between and on the Edge?
The Spatial and Temporal Setting
Material and Interpretative Issues: Fragmentation and Historiographical Incommunicability
Cultural Practices and Forms of Patronage
From Thriving Mediaeval City to a Fortress: Socio-Economic Transitions
Resetting the Time: Zadar Humanist Circles
Strategies of State, Civic, and Family Patronage
Collective, Familial, and Individual Patronage
The Trajectories of Style: Production and Protagonists
Bulk Cargo: The 15th-Century Lapidarium
The Trajectories of Style: Protagonists in the long 15th Century
The Variations of the Classical Vocabulary in the 16th Century
The Early 17th Century Declines of Local Sculpture
The Epilogue
The Rise and the Fall of Zadar Renaissance Architectural and Sculptural Production
Appendix: Fortuna Critica and Some Methodological Remarks