Original scientific paper
THE BLENDED GOTHICO-RENAISSANCE STYLE OF THE ARCHITECT GEORGE MATEJEV (THE DALMATIAN)
Radovan Ivančević
; Zagreb
Abstract
The author emphasizes the importance of understanding of the term »Style« for the art theory and preservationist’s praxis. The »style« is an abstraction derived from the individual, since only individual monuments really exist and problems arise when inadequate style cateogries intrude themselves upon the interpretation of monuments, which should not happen. In such cases it is usually disregarded that there are two style levels: the morphologic and the structural one.
A number of monuments of the past is a »blanding« of two or more styles, and three variants thereof are characteristic: (1) a successive changing of style in the course of the nascent stage of the work of art; (2) a simultaneous action of two (or more) stylistic currents in the forming stage, and (3) a chronologically inverse style relationship – when a stylistically more progressive (»younger«) master builder is succeeded by another, not abreast the times, stylistically retarding (»order«) master. The bell tower of the Trogir cathedral (begun in the Romanesque style and completed in five stages, ending with mature Renaissance) is a paradigmatic example of (1), while the ancient Dubrovnik Custom House (»Divona«) is an example of (2), and the Dubrovnik Palace of the Rectors is an example of (3).
In the polemics between Ljubo Karaman, who was adherent of the idea of »succession of styles« and CviRenaissance elements in the Dubrovnik Custom House appeared simultaneously, but also coined the term of »Gothico-Renaissance transition style« in Dalmatia of the second half of the 15th and of the beginning of the 16th century as an organic and complete stylistic expression. The genesis of that style sees Fisković in the Palace of Dubrovnik Rectors. Both of the two mentioned scholars gave their opinions with regard to the Šibenik Cathedral, classifying George the Dalmatian as a »late Gothic« master.
Pleading for a correction of that deep-rooted classification, the author directs attention to the fact that the relationship of stylistic categories as regards the Šibenik Cathedral is much more complicated, since in its apsis, built by George the Dalmatian, Gothic and Renaissance characteristics parallelly appear as early as 1441. The one-sided definition of George the Dalmatian as a late-Gothic master is first of all due to Karaman’s interpretation, in which the attention centered not on George’s architecture but on decoration, although D. Frey, basing on the structural analysis, gave an excellent definition of George’s Gothico-Renaissance work as early as 1913. Frey’s opinion, however, that »the amount of Renaissance elements is insignificant« is too much restrained, since five important early Renaissance elements were introduced by George in the structures of Baptistry and apsis of the Šibenik Cathedral during the fifth decade of the 15th century: a semicircular arch, a cannulated niche, a cannulated pilaster, fluted shells (semicircular and circular) and a bay-wreath. The cannulated niches and shells dominate in such a way that thCathedral, newly built by master George.
Supposing that the project should have been complated in 1441, and the analyzes the master’s method of composition »outwards from within« and emphasizes that, in the Baptistry, the Renaissance style dominates ihe intermingling of these two styles is characteristic. The key for the understanding of the characteristic capriciousness of the master’s work may be found in the ceiling where a Renaissance bay wreath is covered by a Gothic band.
The structural analysis, however, is more important than the morphological one, since on the level of style as strucure George the Dalamtian reveals himself as an early Renaissance master. By the analysis of the architectural design the author arrives to the conclusion that the Baptistry was designed as a central structure basing on a square and circle, which is typically Renaissance. It results, from the logic of the design, that the space should have been defined by a dome, which master George, locking space, solved in an »illusionistic« way, by perspectively narrowing the groins.
By the analysis of chronology of the Renaissance architecture, the author concludes that before master George left italyt in 1441, barely ten odd Renaissance structures had been completed (Alberti did not realize by then any of the works, and most of Bruneleschi’s works, including the Pazzi Chapel, were still under construction) so that everything that bears the early Renaissance characteristic in George’s work is synchronous with the earliest works of the pioneers of the Renaissance. The »blended Gothico-Renaissance style« however, ist not a phenomenon limited to Dalmatia only, nor to the master George’s work. It has a wider signification in the European Renaissance. A blended style is revealed by works of the indisputably »Renaissance« master such as Michelozzo, even by those created before George left: the façade of St. Augustine Church at Montepulciano and the Brancacci Chapel in Naples. For the interpretation of a monument is more important to visualize its real existence in space, not abstractly separated in photographs and books: Nani di Banco and Donatello have placed their early Renaissance sculptures in Gothic niches of the Campanile and Or san Michele in Florence – why could not master George do the ssme with his sculptures? It is an irrelevant fact for the onlooker that this blending of styles – Gothic and Renaissance – came as a succession in space.
Finally, the terms »Florentine Renaissance« and »Venetian late Gothic« should be more critically used: master George could have received Gothic stimuli in Florence and Renaissance ones in Venice. The florid late Gothic decorations of the Šibenik Baptistry have much in common with the »Trecento« arches etc. of the Or san Michele in Florence, while the problems of Renaissance perspective and illusionism probably has master The Renaissance component of master George’s design of the Šibenik Cahtedral may be noticed not only in the design, but also in morphology and solutions of perspective, which is particularly evident in the innovation of iconography. Instead of representing the scene of baptism (a medieval sheme founded as early as in the 6th century A. D.), master George solves the space of the Baptistry as a scene: God the Father and the Holy Ghost are represented surrounded by angels the vault, but nowhere there is Christ, who is personified by every nowborn baby being christened in the water of the basin (signifying the Jordan River), while the bishop plays the part of John the Baptist. The baptism of Christ is the prefiguration of each baptism, but this substitution of the divine figure with a human one is hardly to be imagined in the freeing of sculptures from the architecture (the three putti group) not so interpreted before.
Basing on a detailed analysis, the author concludes:
(1) George Matejev the Dalmatian, architect and sculptor, was the founder of the »blended« Gothico-Renaissance style in Dalmatia.
(2) The first practical application of the »blended« Gothico-Renaissance style in Dalmatia was the Baptistry of the Šibenik Cathedral built during the fifth decade of the 15th century (the time and place of the appearance of this double style is thus shifted from the Rector’s Palace and the seventh decade of the 15th century to the Cathedral Baptistry and the fifth decade of that century, i. e. to the first half of the Quattrocento.
(3) The »blended« Gothico-Renaissance style is an important conception for the European Renaissance: it is one of the forms of existence of early=Renaissance architecture in general, worthy examples whereof are S. Maria del Fiore, Campanile, and Or san Michele in Florence. The blending of the Gothic and Renaissance morphology appeared in the first half of the 15th century in a series of buildings, either as »succession« (Donatello’s sculptures on the Campanile and Or sam Michele) or »simultaneous« a s in the case of Michelozzo.
(4) Although the Baptistry of the Šibenik Cathedral morphologically belongs to the »blended« Gothico-Renaissance style, according to his method of treating problems of design and solving the questions of form, his innovations in iconography and placing sculpture in space, its author, George Matejev the Dalmatian is an early Renaissance architect and sculptor, and should be placed among the first generation of those »Quattrocento« artists who created and developed the system of the new style.
(5) The Baptistry of the Šibenik Cathedral, as well as the whole design of the Cathedral is a pioneer accomplishment of the European early Renaissance architecture in the fifth decade of the 15th century, when only a few structures in the »pure« Renaissance style were erected.
(6) The Cathedral in Šibenik – the Dalmatian city that not even symbolically is indebted to the Roman tradition for its mediaeval urbanity, since it was founded by the Croatian King Petar Krešimir in the 11th century – was designed by the master George, a Slav, encouraged and donated exclusively by the Croatian nobility and citizens, and it in no way belongs to a »porvincial« or »peripheral« art, but represents the first monument by which the Renaissance in Croatia became part of the European Renaissance art, not in a passive form of taking over, but in the genuine crative sense.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
159965
URI
Publication date:
23.12.1980.
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