Original scientific paper
Ban Dragutin Khuen-Héderváry, Herman Bollé and the Grave of King Milan Obrenović of Serbia in the Church of the Krušedol Monastery
Dragan Damjanović
; Department of History of Arts, Faculty of Philosophy, Split, Croatia
Abstract
The construction of the monument for the tomb of King Milan Obrenović of Serbia and of the project for the never-realised great crypt under the church of the Krušedol monastery on Fruška Gora in Srijem belongs to the most interesting episodes of life of architect Herman Bollé. Work on the construction of the monuments was obtained for him by his connections with contemporary Croatian authorities, particularly with Ban Dragutin (Károly) Khuen-Héderváry (Ban of Croatia from 1883 to 1903), which secured for him numerous important engagements all around Croatia even earlier, particularly during the 1890s. The construction of the monument was financed personally by Emperor Francis Joseph I, who was a friend of King Milan of Serbia and wanted to emphasise his gratitude to him for binding Serbia to Austria. The monument, whose construction was performed by teachers and pupils of the Artisans’ School in Zagreb, led by the stonecutter Ignjat Franz, was made in 1901. In the same year there commenced the undertaking of the project for the crypt. Initial projects anticipated the construction of a representative great crypt, in which the bodies of members of the ruling house of the Obrenovići buried in Krušedol, that is, those of King Milan and Duchess Ljubica, but also those of numerous other important people buried in the monastery church, could be interred. Serbian Patriarch Georgije Branković strongly opposed the building of such a crypt, because of the great cost of such an endeavour. Because of that, Bollé had, in the middle of 1902, to embark on a new project for a smaller crypt, with only three tombs (one of which was planned for the aforementioned Serbian Patriarch), but this too was not realised because of the worsening of the political situation in Croatia: anti-Serbian demonstrations burst out in Zagreb in the beginning of September 1902.
The realised monument, as well as the unrealised project for the crypt and restoration of the Krušedol church, demonstrates Bollé’s specific variants of the Neo-Byzantine style, which was a freely understood combination of elements taken from early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque and even Renaissance architecture.
Keywords
Herman Bollé; Ban Dragutin Khuen-Héderváry; King Milan Obrenović of Serbia; historicism; Neo-Byzantine style
Hrčak ID:
75861
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2011.
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