Original scientific paper
On Late Bizantine Goldsmith Artistic Influences in Dubrovnik
Vinicije Lupis
; Institut Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Abstract
Dubrovnik, under Venetian occupation after 1204, continued to be a link between East and West, but after 1358 when as an independent country it maintained good connections with the weakening Byzantium up until the latter's final fall in 1453, and with minor feudal Greek states such as the Despotate of Epiros as evidenced by the prostagma of Michael II Komnenos Doukas, Despot of Epirus (1236-1271) issued in 1251 to the people of Dubrovnik in which is regulated mercantile and legal-property relations between Dubrovnik citizens and the Despotate of Epiros. We can follow that continuity from the example of a reliquary box preserved under catalogue number CLV in the Reliquarium of Dubrovnik's main church with a relief in the form of the archangel with sceptre and orb the same as on the staurotheca from the Camaidolese monastery of San Michele in Murano which is now preserved in Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana near Caglia in Marche. Another example is the reliquary of the leg of St Pancras which is preserved under catalogue number XLIII, with four renovated depictions of archangels, hammered out on the same template as on several crosses in the Dubrovnik area and the gold altarpiece in Caorle. This continuity continues up to the last gold seal from the spring of 1451 -the most valuable Byzantine document in the Dubrovnik State Archive the chrysobull of Constantine xl Paleologus Dragases (1449-1453) from 1451. Thus we can trace in Dubrovnik almost half a millennium of the development of Byzantine goldsmithery and its artistic influence on the development of goldsmithery in Dubrovnik as then the great goldsmiths' centre of Europe. Translation: Nicholas Philip SayweJl
Keywords
processional crucijix; gold altarpiece; chrysobull; prostagma; Byzantium
Hrčak ID:
81501
URI
Publication date:
10.12.2007.
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