Original scientific paper
MURAL PAINTINGS IN THE SORKOČEVIĆ VILLA IN THE OMBLA RIVER NEAR DUBROVNIK
Vladimir Marković
; Zagreb
Abstract
The walls of the spacious loggia of the Sorkočević villa in the Ombla River valley (Rijeka Dubrovačka, west of Dubrovnik) have been painted about 1700. The themes of murals are in connection with the myths of Antiquity. The figures and scenes are the following: The decision of Paris, The death of Adonis, Heracles at a crossroads, Venus and Mars, Odysseus listining to syrens, Minerva and Neptune rivalling for the Attic lands; then follow, one by one, the paintings of Flora, Pan, Bakhus. Alegories of the four seasons of the year – Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter – are painted over the four inside doors.
Sorkočević decided to let the loggia of his villa be painted, wishing to visually represent his historico-mythical ideas referring to his own time. Three thematic strata may be noticed in the paintings, the first being the allegories of the seasons of the year; the second a moral didactic story; the third Arcadian, rustic. The themes are represented by individual figures (Flora, Bakhus), but also by a »general disposition« of all scenes, thus becoming the basic theme of all paintings. The same qualities are recognizable in the painting showing the rivalry between Minerva and Neptune. A fortified city on the seashore, represented behind them, is situated and shaped in such a way that it suggests Dubrovnik. It is really an allusion to Dubrovnik. In the perception of the patricians of 16th and 17th centuries Dubrovnik, their free city, lying on the borderline between the land and the sea, glitters in the hazy image of the polis from the Antiquity. Such Dubrovnik continues to appear also in the conception of the country life in the city’s environs represented in the loggia of the Sorkočević villa, where it has an aura of the antique Arcadia.
The moral and didactic themes, being the most numerous in the painted scenes, are also the most complicated with regard to stories they represent. Through the medium of examples taken from the Greek mythology, the paintings show a good and a bad choice of the course of life. In the Decision of Paris and in the Death of Adonis, the ill-fated part closes, while a propitious orientation in the life of man is depicted in the scenes representing Heracles at the crossroads, Venus and Mars and Odysseus listening to syrens.
The contents of the moral and didactic story shows that the originator of the program was familiar with the neoplatonic phylosophy. The key figure of the story – the goddess Venus – is the bearer of opposite meanings. She is once associated with vice (in the »Decision of Paris«) and in the »Death of Adonis«) and another time (in the company of Mars) she displays the harmony of family life, the embodiment of love full of virtues. Such manifold symbolic interpretation of Venus originates from the neo-Platonic distinguishing of various types of love, all of them represented by the figure of Venus. Te neo-Platonic phylosophy was known in Dubrovnik by the end of the »quattrocento« while significant humanistic activity followed in the next century, when phylosophic studies became widely pursued (Nikola Gučetić, Miho Monardi).
The idea of the villa and its international assignment has been demonstrated by means of murals. The mythical Arcadian world of the Antiquity is the standard by which the owner of the villa determines the conception of his own fate: the mysthical heroes in the story are the models of his own conduct, the history of his city has been placed on the same level with the ancient polis, while the deities of forests, spring, and fertility, link the villa and the nature of its environs with the poetic charm of the Arcadian world.
Through the medium of murals, the reality has been sublimated into a fictitious order, the historical into nonhistorical, the real into mythical. That transfiguration involves the villa in general. Its architectonic organization obtains a new topography determined by the aesthetic order originating from the thematic contents of the murals. The allegories of the seasons of the year in the loggia stand for the ideal topographic arrangement of spaces of the villa. Summer and Winter are painted over the entrances to the parts of the villa which are most frequently used in those two seasons. The landscape painted in the murals of the loggia is a thematic sequence of the stylized shape of the park stretching before the large arches. In that way, the loggia links the villa with the park, the open space with the enclosed one; architecture and nature come together in it, the reality meets myths, the idea of life joins the reality of the fate of man.
The unknown painter of the murals in the loggia of the Sorkočević villa has availed himself of the drawings of Pietro Aquila (who died in 1692), made from the murals by Anibale Carracci at Camerino Farnese (the Farnese Palace in Rome). The painter used the drawings as models for the following scenes: Heracles at the crossroads, Odysseus listening to Syrens, and the Allegory of Winter, the latter containing a variant of Heracles at rest by Carracci. The Allegory of Summer is also painted as a model of a century older theme by Jan Sadeler (1550-1600). The author concludes that the painter – most probably in agreement with the owner of the villa – has chosen the models to be repainted in the loggia, according to their thematic contents. His main goals are, first of all, the themes to be painted, little caring for the stylistic differences existing among the closen models. This is why the loggia contains painting beside paintings, the conception of one being expressly manneristic, and the other showing Carracci’s system of Baroque forms.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
159699
URI
Publication date:
23.12.1980.
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