Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/ygjwrcpldy
The Question of Thematical Determination of Painting of Bela Čikoš Sesija from the Collection of Benedictine Convent of St. Margaret in Pag
Ivana Prijatelj Pavičić
orcid.org/0000-0003-4379-3074
; University of Split, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Split, Croatia
Abstract
The article discusses the painting of Bela Čikoš Sesija kept in the collection of the Benedictine Nunnery of St. Margaret in Pag. It was presented to the public for the first time in the exhibition in the Nunnery in 2013 under the title “The arrival of the Croats at Adriatic”. The painting contains the signature of the painter and the year of its creation (1884). The painting in the first plane shows a group of men participating in falconry and a woman. In the second plane of the composition is shown a cavalcade, a group of men and women riding on horses. In the introduction of the article, the attention is awarded to comparative and stylistic analysis of the Pag oeuvre, created prior to the artist’s departure to study in Viennese Academy. In the following part of the article, Čikoš’s depiction on the Pag painting is subjected to detailed historiographical and iconographical and iconological analysis. The author decided to search identification of the painting theme from critical positions of past and contemporary historiography and culturology, that is on the interdisciplinary dialogue with historiography, history of literature and folk lore, history of culture, political science, ideology, and mythology. Particular attention has been awarded to those historiographical works dealing with the settlement of Early Slavs and their stay in the area of present-day Croatia, that is former Illyricum, as well as to few legends of the settlement of Slavonic peoples which include motives of falconry. After conducted iconographic analysis, the article dismisses the supposition that the Pag painting presents the topic of the arrival of the Croats on Adriatic. It proposes the possibility that Bela Čikoš Sesija, having in mind texts of Ljudevit Gaj and Vjekoslav Klaić, perhaps, might depict a falconry scene of Duke Hrvat, his sons Čeh, Leh and Meh, and their sister Vilina (maybe identical to Libuša) in the area of Krapina. Still, the article maintains the opinion that issue of final identification of the theme of the Pag painting should be left open, while some historiographical source which would fully correspond to the scene depicted or some other work of pictorial art which would be close to the Pag painting.
Keywords
Bela Čikoš Sesija; depictions of the arrival of the Croats on Adriatic; motive of falconry in the historiography on the ethnogenesis of the Slavs; legends of Čeh, Leh, Meh and Libuša; legends of Vilina; Ljudevit Gaj
Hrčak ID:
281720
URI
Publication date:
13.9.2022.
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