Colloquia Maruliana, Vol. 31 No. 31, 2022.
Review article
Marulić’s Judita between facsimile and virtual doubles
Milan Pelc
; Institute of Art History
Abstract
This article was prompted by a facsimile reprint of a copy of Judita (1521)
in the library of the Franciscan Friars Minor Priory in Dubrovnik. This is the
third fully facsimile edition of Marulić’s poem to appear as a separate book. The
first facsimile reprint of the first edition of Judita of 1521 was undertaken by the
Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1950, marking the 5th centenary of the
birth of Marko Marulić. The 1522 edition of Judita, the most richly illustrated with
woodcuts, had a facsimile reprint in 2001 thanks to the Croatian community in
Milan, the reprint being edited by Snježana Susović Hefti and appearing in Riccardo
Hefti’s Heftiedizioni imprint. The most recent facsimile reprint, published
by Split City Museum, has been produced according to excellent digitisation in
high quality printing that, notwithstanding minor shortcomings in graphic design,
enables highly faithful reproduction of the original copy.
As well as in separate facsimile reprints, copies of Marulić’s epic have several
times been produced in editions furnished with notes and comments (for example,
that of Školska knjiga in Zagreb, 1991, edited by Mirko Tomasović; Matica
hrvatska, 1998, edited by Milan Moguš). Although they do permit an inspection of
the original text, from the technical and visual viewpoint the reproductions of the
pages of the original copy of Judita are in these publications at the level of superior
photocopies, and here, as with other, similar, editions, it is not possible to speak of
a facsimile in the full sense of the word. A direct inspection of the original printed
text of Judita is also enabled by that type of copy of Marulić’s poem in which
reproductions of the individual pages of the original are printed a fronte, i.e., each
page is faced with a modernised treatment of Marulić’s verses (Matica hrvatska,
2003, edited by Marko Grčić). These facsimile versions of Judita demonstrate the
differences in the approaches of the editors and in the technical capacities of the
times in which they were produced. The most recent reprint is founded on a digital
technology that, apart from the making of a high quality physical copy also offers
the possibility of easy and rapid access to virtual doubles of the earliest copies of
the work. Copies of all five old editions of Marulić’s epic (of 1521, 1522, 1523,
1586 and 1627), kept in Zagreb, Zadar, Munich and Dubrovnik, can be consulted
rapidly and unrestrictedly via the Internet, which must surely open up new spaces
for the better acquaintance with and more comprehensive study of Marulić’s work.
Keywords
Marko Marulić; Judita; facsimile editions
Hrčak ID:
277985
URI
Publication date:
10.6.2022.
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