Original scientific paper
CIBORIA OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES IN KOTOR
Pavuša Vežić
; Filozofski fakultet u Zadru
Abstract
The pre-Romanesque ciboria described are characterised by joint stylistic features typical of the artworks derived from the hypothesised Boka masonry workshop. Mostly this is to do with marble installations that are characterised by very fine workmanship and certain components of the visual arts clearly taken over from the Byzantine artistic tradition. These primarily are the figures of lions with a certain iconographic scheme. They are shown running, driving small animals in front of them. Their jaws are agape, their manes flowing, and on their backs they have a long tail bent into an S line (Komolac, Kotor, Ulcinj). On the arcades below the top cornice is a cymatium with classical ovolo moulding (Kotor, Ulcinj). The narrow lateral sides on the façade and rear arcades are decorated with festoons like the flower of the acanthus with its sharp leaves and tendrils turned into volutes (Dubrovnik, Ulcinj) . The curves of some of the arcades of the Kotor ciboria are followed by broad bands with a three stranded stalks that in waving lines close off oval fields with ivy leaves and lily flowers. The stylistic uniformity of all the ciboria of the Boka group, and with them many other elements of the liturgical furnishings in the whole area from Dubrovnik to Ulcinj speak suggestively of the production of a single workshop located perhaps in Kotor itself, where there are the most works from it. Chronologically, however, the Kotor ciboria should be referred to the conditions that occurred in the city after 806. Then, as early as 809, the reliquary of St Tripun, martyr of Phrygia in Asia Minor, were acquired for it. For this, probably, a separate memoria was later built. The shrine is typologically similar to similar features in Byzantine architecture. Finally, a very important support for the dating of the whole group is the undoubted names of the Byzantine emperors on the Ulcinj ciborium, Leo V and his son Constantine, who ruled 813-820. All this together gives a realistic opportunity for the dating of the overall production of the Boka workshop (and also the erecting of the memoria to St Tripun in Kotor) to the first quarter or third of the 9th century. It is interesting that are similar ornaments with relief from this workshop, on some specimens of pre-Romanesque stone sculpting in Istria and southern Dalmatia. Thus for example two three stranded stems that approach and depart from each other in waving lines, closing off oval shapes between them, as on the ciboria in Dubrovnik and Kotor, can also be found alongside the edges of the left and right sides on the arcade of the ciborium of St Felicita in Pula, or the broad band alongside the arch on the arcade of the ciborium from Novalja on Pag, as also on the pre-Romanesque fragment from Omišalj on Krk, and on a series of fragments of church architecture in Dubrovnik. The acanthus flower from the fragments of the ciborium from the cathedral in Dubrovnik or Ulcinj and the screenslabs from the cathedral in Kotor, or, even, the Tree of Life from the baptistery ciborium in Kotor and the pluteus in Dubrovnik can be found also in the sarcophagus and pluteus from the cathedral in Zadar. All this indicates a wide circulation of models for certain motifs that were characteristic, otherwise, of the reliefs of the Boka workshop. This also suggests certain contacts in the first decades of the 9th century between the masonry work of, for example, Zadar on the one hand and Dubrovnik and Kotor on the other. This is the period in which Byzantine rule in Dalmatia was consolidated, a time marked by the years before and after the Peace of Aachen. This is a phenomenon to which in the study of liturgical furnishing and stylistic features of it in Istria and Dalmatia further attention should be paid. However, the fragments of the early-Romanesque ciboria in Kotor should also be related to the art that accompanied the reforms of the church in the west during the 11th century. A reflection of this reform can be seen in the architecture of the early-Romanesque basilica, particulary those in the Benedictine abbeys from the Venetian lagoons all along the Adriatic coastal area to the Dalmatian islands and cities. Typical of them for instance are the particular forms of the acanthus spinosa capitals (which from the coast of Dalmatia penetrated deeply into the European continent, to the Benedictine abbeys in Hungary). Hence there is no wonder about the stylistic similarity of the fragments of the early-Romanesque ciboria in Kotor and those in Zadar and Salona and in particularly with the hexagonal ciborium from the baptistery in Grado, Italy. This suggests a lasting maintenance of contacts between the Dalmatian workshops and those in the cultural area of Grado and Aquilea.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
110128
URI
Publication date:
8.8.2005.
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