Original scientific paper
Francesco Cortese — Designer of the Zamanja Palace in Dubrovnik (1669.)
Katarina Horvat-Levaj
; Institut za povijest umjetnosti Zagreb
Abstract
The Baroque architecture of Dubrovnik is distinguished from the Baroque elsewhere in Dalmatia; this is due to special circumstances arising from the catastrophic earthquake of 1667, as well as to multiple sources of the new 17'" and 18'" century style. As opposed to Venice, the free Republic of Dubrovnik, was open to such centers as Rome and Genoa. Whereas the architects of Dubrovnik's religious buildings have been well-known for a while, relatively few data have been available about the builders of secular structures. Yet it is obvious that a number of buildings in this category were planned by foreign, most likely Italian artists, initially hired by the Government to work on public and religious buildings. It is known, for example, that the first foreign architect to arrive from Rome to Dubrovnik, Giulio Ceruti, a military architect sent by the Pope, proposed a design for the first commune's house on the Placa, a plan subsequently rejected by the Senate. However, when this plan is analyzed within the context of typologically similar contemporary residential architecture (with a traditional type of staircase within a»podesta« — hall), its spatial articulation shows that what was left out of Ceruti's plan was just the form of facades, whereas the essential features of the ground plan were retained. Within the context of the material mentioned above, a recent archival discovery about the building of the house of the Dubrovnik Rector and a Member of the Small Council, Luka Zamanja, at the square across from the Rector's Palace, by another Roman architect, Francesco Cortese, is highly significant. Cortese entered the Republic's service in 1668, recommended by Ceruti primarily as an advisor to help rebuild the city after the earthquake, but also as a consultant for the renovation of the Rector's Palace. Due to subsequent changes of design and ownership, the attribution of the Palace at Gundulićeva Poljana 1 to Cortese was somewhat hypothetical. However, through an analysis of its spatial disposition one can easily conclude, in spite of numerous changes between the 18'" and the 20'" century, that one is faced with a fully developed design of »the most progressive«Dubrovnik Baroque palace type, i.e., the one with an independent staircase placed in the central axis of the building.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
147912
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2002.
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