Izvorni znanstveni članak
A Contribution to the Understanding of Wooden Sculpture in Blato and the Biography of the Sculptor Frano K(Č)učić of Blato
Vinicije B. Lupis
; Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar Dubrovnik
Sažetak
This work represents a deepening of the author’s previous knowledge about the Renaissance sculptor Frano K(Č)učić. Pursuant to archival research, a new reading of the surname in the form Kučić is proposed. Frano K(Č)učić certainly died before 1638, for in the last will of Marija Nikola Pecotić of January 2, 1638, the heirs of the late Fran(k)o Kučić are mentioned. In the papers of the aristocratic Arneri family in the State Archives in Dubrovnik there is a copy of the will of Frana Bošković, the daughter of the late master Frano K(Č)učić of 1642. This record has finally confirmed the artist’s connection with Lastovo and explained the reason for the poor quality of the statue of St Roch, written of before, for clearly it was produced in the artist’s advanced years, when he was living on Lastovo at his daughter Frana’s place. The work has enlarged the previously known oeuvre of the artist with a smallish crucifix from the Parish Church of All Saints in Blato.
Thus at last with several statues and wooden reliefs an artwork connected with his artistic oeuvre has been identified in the native place of the master as well. Similarly, after field work, a whole series of wooden sculptures ranging from the late 16th to the early 20th century in Blato have been discussed. Most of them are kept in All Saints’ Church in Blato, as well as in the Church of Our Lady of Health, the Holy Trinity (St Lucy’s) and the Church of SS Cosmas and Damian in the parish of All Saints Blato. The wooden statue of St Lawrence of the early 16th century is exceptionally worthwhile, and as well as the extant parts of a dilapidated wooden polyptych of the early 17th century, a special place can still be claimed today by an until recently completely well preserved wooden altarpiece of SS Cosmas and Damian. Luckily, in Blato there is an unusually integral example of a wooden carved altar of the 17th century in the Church of Holy Trinity (St Lucy’s). On the basis of drawings from the Korčula notebook that derives from the Korčula Letis family, today kept in the Korčula Abbey Treasury, where there are preliminary drawings for the antependia and altars, the Blato antependium of the wooden altar should be ascribed to a domestic woodcarving workshop. In the Church of Holy Cross at the old cemetery there is an intact series of statues: the Crucified One, the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene, produced in Venetian workshops in the 17th century, permitting the possibility of having been formed in a local workshop active in the Dalmatia of the time. As well as a number of processional crucifixes of the 18th and 19th century and statues, attention is drawn by a monumental wooden crucifix created in a Venetian workshop in the first half of the 18th century and a figurehead – a statue of Our Lady of the Rosary, a particular phenomenon of cult veneration applied to a part of the ship’s equipment. The statue of St Roch from the parish church in Blato is the work of Marin Radica (Korčula, October 5, 1863 – Korčula, May 13, 1904), an artist who made several statues of St Roch. Radica clearly subordinated his series of St Roch statues to the stiffly modelled Late Renaissance statue of St Roch by Frano K(Č)učić from the Korčula cathedral that suited him. Like K(Č)učić, Marin Radica too came from the island of Korčula, telling of the constant endeavour of little milieus with their talented artists to keep up with the artistic trends and the needs for the visual completion of the inherited landscape.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
240916
URI
Datum izdavanja:
29.6.2020.
Posjeta: 1.157 *