Ars Adriatica, No. 4, 2014.
Original scientific paper
Summer Residences of the Venetian Colonel Vuko Crnica on the Islands of Vir and Ugljan
Sofija Sorić
; Department of History of Art, University of Zadar, Croatia
Abstract
The author deals with two country houses of Vuko Crnica which have not hitherto been subject to scholarly research. One of them is no longer extant residential and agricultural complex of the Crnica Family on the island of Vir which consisted of a country house, a chapel and a small utility building. These structures were built by Vuko Crnica, a colonel in the Venetian army, after 1634, when he received the island of Vir as a concession, but before 1666, when they were mentioned for the first time in his will. The country house at Preko on the island of Ugljan was erected in 1666, as is recorded on the inscription installed above the entrance to the garden. This house is well-preserved albeit in a modified form because of the nineteenth-century intervention which occured when it was owned by the painter Franjo Salghetti-Drioli. Significant features of the summer residence at Preko include a large, well-preserved garden, as well as the original articulation of the living quarters inside the house. The inventories of the country houses at Vir and Preko, recorded in 1683, enable us to reconstruct their original appearance and furnishings. Both country houses belong to the large group of seventeenth-century summer residencies being built on Zadar islands. Both, through their characteristic locations by the sea, one with a chapel, the other with a large garden, fit into the contemporary trends in country house architecture on Dalmatian islands, marked by simple, utilitarian architecture with hints of Baroque morphology applied to specific elements of architectural and sculptural decoration.
Keywords
country house architecture; seventeenth century; Zadar islands
Hrčak ID:
130926
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2014.
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