Original scientific paper
From Juraj Ratkaj to Gustáv Kazimír Zechenter: A Hall of Fame from the Gubernatorial Palace in Varaždin
Danko Šourek
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Abstract
In the depot of the Zagreb Museum of Arts and Crafts there lie deposited eight paintings representing historical Croatian rulers, saints and the blessed ones, designated in Latin inscriptions as Ostroilo—the King of Croatian Dalmatia and Bosnia; Selimir—the King of Croatia and Dalmatia; Polislav—the King of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia; Godeskalk—the King of Slavonia and a Martyr; Jelena the Beautiful—the Queen of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia; St. Quirinus—the Bishop of Siscia; St. John—the Son of Croatian King Gostumil and Blessed Augustin Kažotić—the Bishop of Zagreb. The allegedly first mention of these paintings might be found in the travelling notes, Zlomki z d'enňíka cestovat'ela po Horvátskej, by the Slovak writer Gustáv Kazimír Zechenter Laskomerský published in 1846. Zechenter saw paintings in their original site, in the hall of the Gubernatorial palace in Varaždin, a city deeply immersed in the fervor of the Croatian national revival. Their unknown author—most likely due to the requests of the commissioners—used in his choice of characters and iconographic solutions a well-established but in the nineteenth-century already a somewhat outdated literary and pictorial source. The choice of protagonists of the Varaždin cycle is strongly marked by Juraj Ratkaj's historiographic work (Memorial of the Kings and Viceroys of the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia) published in Vienna in 1652, and his formal solutions build upon those applied by Juraj Šubarić, a Viennese illustrator of Croatian descent, on the title illustration of the same book.
Keywords
Gustáv Kazimír Zechenter; Juraj Ratkaj; historicist portraits; the Croatian national revival; Varaždin
Hrčak ID:
213389
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2018.
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