Original scientific paper

Neoclassical circles in Dubrovnik

Goran Vuković orcid.org/0000-0003-2477-699X

Abstract

Neoclassicism as a style and intellectual tradition in Dubrovnik has, until recently, been scarcely studied, however that changed at the end of the past century. Then, due to political and social occurrences in the nineties, numerous studies, translations and republications of relevant works appeared, which resulted in new understandings of that period in historiography and art history, philosophy and history of literature. In them, authors and their achievements were mainly observed within the limits of specific disciplines, which raised several issues.
The first concerns authors with universal interests, who worked in various fields, hence their contribution was never adequately observed within a single field. The other emerges from the fact that, without some sort of methodological pluralism, chronology and the dynamics of Neoclassicism in Dubrovnik could not be determined, starting from first manifestations of new affinities around 1690 to terminal occurrences in the middle of the 19th century. Thus the diapason of Neoclassicism remained vague, nonetheless exceptional for the city situated under the Balkan hills and not on the shores of Tiber or Seine; it encompassed three generations and approximatelyfifty representatives whose activities can be observed beyond Croatian borders at least in Italy, France, England, Austria and Germany. After all, there was no satisfactory interpretation of that cultural phenomenon, so the role the Jesuit and then Piarist Collegium Rhagusinum and the Roman colony of students of that institution had in the affirmation of Neoclassicism in Dubrovnik, was almost unnoticed.
Thus, the aim of this paper is to precisely map the appearance of Neoclassi-cism in Dubrovnik and determine its intensity. The complexity of its character will be illustrated by new ideas and achievements in literature, archaeology, applied science, art and political theory, while the analysis of genealogy of spe-cific achievements will point to the connectedness of endeavours of the period with the past and the future.

Keywords

Neoclassicism; periodisation; scientification of architecture; canonisation of the cultural tradition; classical republicanism; Dubrovnik

Hrčak ID:

99687

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/99687

Publication date:

25.2.2013.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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