Original scientific paper

An Unpublished Synthesis by Anđela Horvat

Andrej Žmegač ; Institut za povijest umjetnosti

Abstract

The article discusses the unpublished work by Anđela Horvat entitled A Survey of Art History of Inland Croatia (Pregled povijesti umjetnosti kontinentalnog dijela Hrvatske), written in 1971 as a part of a planned series Panorama of Arts and Literature in Croatia (Panorama umjetnosti i književnosti u Hrvata); the project was initiated by the publishing company Zora, but it has never been realized. The manuscript covers
the period from the 7th century to 1900 and spreads over 240 pages of text, to be accompanied by 202 illustrations selected by the author. The series was obviously intended for a broader audience, so the text bears no formal scholarly characteristics, such as notes. It can be asserted that Horvat applied the popular scientifi c approach which included a series of new discoveries and new ideas or hypotheses. She herself stressed this feature several times, pointing out that some information cannot be retrieved in other published sources. The author must have been satisfi ed and proud of her work, since she planned to publish it as a separate volume, outside the Zora series. The most interesting and the most distinctive feature of the work was an innovatively conceived
periodization: the duration of the periods from Pre-Romanesque to Historicism is set to overlap with the »neighbouring« periods, those which precede and follow. This system, undoubtedly based on long-known concepts, is now discerned not only in the text itself, but also in its titles, which makes a special point on real artistic developments and the life of style in works of art. The manuscript represents one of Anđela Horvat’s three important syntheses, the other two being the well-known books Between the Gothic and the Baroque (Između gotike i baroka, 1975) and Baroque in Inland Croatia (Barok u kontinentalnoj Hrvatskoj, 1982, a section of the book Baroque in Croatia – Barok u Hrvatskoj). The unpublished work differs from the other two mainly in its approach or purpose, as well as a far greater time span. Because of these singularities, along with the work’s aforementioned values, one can only regret that the manuscript has remained unpublished.

Keywords

Anđela Horvat; synthesis; inland Croatia; 7th-19th century

Hrčak ID:

188278

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/188278

Publication date:

15.12.2011.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 1.286 *