Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.17018/portal.2020.3
Two 15th Century Sacristy Cabinets with Intarsia Inlays in the Trogir Area
Davor Gazde
orcid.org/0000-0003-0220-7702
; Croatian Conservation Institute, Split Department for Conservation, Croatia
Abstract
This paper will present new hypotheses about the original location of the sacristy cabinet from the 15th century that is currently located in the monastery of the Holy Cross on Čiovo. The introduction talks about the monastery and the church of the Holy Cross, with an emphasis on wooden inventory from the 15th century. There is a brief overview of the history of intarsia, and some of the many comparative examples from Italy are mentioned.
All the elements of the cabinet on Čiovo are analysed on the bases of history, art and techniques, and different types of samples of intarsia inlays are defined. Each of the five doors is divided into twelve fields, and each one has a rectangular geometric motif made using the wood inlaying technique and rotated by 45°. The central part of the profiled frame, which divides the doors into a total of sixty fields, also has intarsia inlays. In total, there are six different central geometric motifs, which sometimes appear in a mirror arrangement, and five different geometric motifs found on the frames.
The geometric intarsia inlays on the doors are reminiscent of the inlays of the much more famous sacristy cabinet of the cathedral in Trogir. The cabinet in Trogir, ordered in 1457, was made by Grgur Vidov with the help of a Venetian carver. The original contract was not preserved, but valuable information from the contract is brought to us by Didak Manola, Bishop of Trogir, in his description of Trogir Cathedral of 1756.
The parts of the Čiovo and Trogir cabinets with intarsia inlays are analysed and compared, and the assumption that they were made by the same master or workshop, which had already existed within professional circles, is explained. After the research was extended to the sacristy of Trogir Cathedral, it was suspected that these two cabinets were actually part of one unit that was located in Trogir Cathedral. A description of the church of the Holy Cross by Agostino Valier from 1579, as well as a description of the cathedral of St. Lawrence in Trogir, made by Didak Manola in 1756, provided us with valuable information that supports the hypothesis that the Čiovo cabinet is actually part of the sacristy cabinet of Trogir Cathedral.
Keywords
sacristy cabinet; intarsia inlays; gothic furniture; furniture; Trogir Cathedral; monastery of the Holy Cross on Čiovo
Hrčak ID:
250624
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2020.
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