Original scientific paper
St. Peter the Old’s Church and Bianchi’s edicola S. Marina in Zadar
Pavuša Vežić
; Odjel za povijest umjetnosti Sveučilište u Zadru, Zadar, Hrvatska
Abstract
In this paper the author discusses the St. Peter the Old’s Church in Zadar. It is a small complex consisting of two chapels – the front and the rear one. The fundamental excavations carried out from 1959 to 1963 showed that the front chapel was actually an early Christian oratory. As regards the rear one, originally thought to have been directly connected with the front one from the very beginning, it seems it was built as a separate oratory. Built in Early Middle Ages as a simple room with an elongated trapezoidal layout, it was later adapted and turned into an inbuilt double-naved and double-apsed space of an undivided architectural composition, arched with cross vaults. It is characterized by the early Romanesque architecture typical for the 11th-century churches in Zadar and Dalmatia. In Middle Ages, the front oratory was used as a chapel and the meeting place of the then Zadar builders’ guild, a fraternity dedicated to St. Mary (more precisely, to Annunziata – the cult of her Annunciation). It seems that the fraternity connected the front and rear oratories in the 15th century, while using the rear one as the chapel of Annunciation. However, there are indications that the rear oratory – earlier separated – was originally dedicated to the cult of St. Marina: a fragment of the ciborium arcade with the name MARINA inscribed in it was found in the complex of St. Peter the Old and C. I. Bianchi records the mentioning of the edicola of St. Marina, located “next to the old arsenal”. It is mentioned in a 1420 document. In the author’s opinion, it could have been the rear oratory of the complex, dedicated to Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the 15th century and connected with the front oratory – the St. Peter the Old’s Church – during the same period. However, in the 17th century, it was dedicated to the cult of St. Andrew, the patron of the fishermen’s and sailors’ guild. The edicola became its sacristy.
Keywords
church; memorial church; aedicula; apse; trompe; vaults
Hrčak ID:
162414
URI
Publication date:
10.5.2016.
Visits: 2.790 *