scholarly journals Oltar Sv. Jeronima u crkvi Sv. Šime u Zadru i radionica Bettamelli

Ars Adriatica ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Bojan Goja

Based on the book, the full title of which is Registro delle Administrationi de Signori Governatori di San Gerolimo della Nation Oltramarinna in Dalmatia et Albania, this paper discusses the altar of St Jerome in the church of St Simeon at Zadar. It is already known that the altar was commissioned and maintained by the confraternity of Croatian and Albanian soldiers (Croatti a cavallo and Soldati Albanesi) founded in 1675 at Zadar, who were in the service of the Venetian Republic. New archival research has established that on 26 September 1694 the confraternity authorized the expense of 200 silver ducats intended for two Venetian carvers, the Bettamelli brothers, as a down payment for the making of the altar. The work on the altar began in April 1696 and several local master craftsmen took part in it: Zanotti, Rodo and Radičić, as well as smith Rosini. Since the Bettameli brothers, the makers of the altar of St Jerome, are not mentioned in the records by their first names, it should be noted that an altar-maker of the name of Alberto Bettamelli from Venice was responsible for the construction of the high altar and its tabernacle in the cathedral of St Maurus at Maniago (Friuli), as we learn from a contract made in 1693. Alberto Bettamelli also made the tabernacle in the parish church at Marsure (Aviano, Friuli). Bortolo Betamelli (Bettamelli), a tagliapietra, is mentioned between 1646 and 1682 in the ledgers containing contracts of apprenticeship to various sculptors, stone-cutters and carvers kept by the Giustizia Vecchia, a magistracy which supervised the activities of Venetian guilds. Two tabernacles have been attributed to the Bettamelli workshop: one on the high altar of the parish church at Maniago Libero (Maniago, Friuli) of 1694, and one in the parish church at Provesano (Friuli). Based on the records about the construction of the altar of St Jerome, it can be suggested that the coat of arms (composed of a cartouche with a shield emblazoned with a left-facing rampant lion and the initials C.C.S.F. above) depicted on the east pillar of the altar base, previously linked to the members of the Civran family, refers to Šimun Fanfogna (Zadar, 7 April 1663 - Lendinara, 6 March 1707), a Zadar nobleman and distinguished commander in the Venetian army who was the caretaker of the altar. The altar of St Jerome together with the surrounding area inside the church aisle - also called the chapel of St Jerome - represented an isolated unit delineated by a balustraded rail which could be used separately from the rest of the church, on certain occasions and festivities, by the members of the confraternity as well as the representatives of local and regional Venetian government at Zadar, and ecclesiastical and other dignitaries. Numerous works on the decoration of the altar and chapel of St Jerome were carried out throughout the whole of the eighteenth century and large numbers of local craftsmen skilled in different arts were engaged in them. Over a number of years, the Registro mentions the builders Antonio Piovesana (1742) and Antonio Bernardini (1789), the altar-maker Girolamo Picco (1756), the marangon Domenico Tomaselli (1743), blacksmith Antonelli (1744) and the goldsmiths Zorzi Cullisich (1738), Nicolò Giurovich (1752) and Giuseppe (Josip) Rado (1755). A number of other interesting pieces of information concerning the decoration of the altar and the activity of the confraternity of St Jerome is also presented.

Author(s):  
Damir Tulić

Senior representatives of the Venetian Republic inspired distinguished noblemen and rich citizens in Venice, as well as in Terraferma and Stato da Mar, to perpetuate their memory through lavish commemorative monuments that were erected in churches and convents. Their endeavour for self-promotion and their wish to monopolise glory could be detected in the choice of material for the busts that adorned almost every monument: marble. The most elaborate monument of this kind belongs to the Brutti family, erected in 1695 in Koper Cathedral. In 1688 the Town of Labin ordered a marble bust of local hero Antonio Bollani and placed it on the facade of the parish church. Fine examples of family glorification could be found in the capital of Venetian Dalmatia – Zadar. In the Church of Saint Chrysogonus, there is a monument to the provveditore Marino Zorzi, adorned with a marble portrait bust. Rather similar is the monument to condottiere Simeone Fanfogna in Zadar’s Benedictine Church of Saint Mary and the monument to the military engineer Francesco Rossini in Saint Simeon. All these monuments embellished with portrait busts have a common purpose: to ensure the everlasting memory of important individuals. This paper analyses comparative examples, models, artists, as well as the desires of clients or authorities that were able to invest money in self or family promotion, thus creating the identity of success.


Ars Adriatica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Damir Tulić ◽  
Mario Pintarić

In the small town of Ceregnano, not far from Rovigo in Veneto, a new parish church was built in the 18th century. Its richly ornamented high altar has a monumental tabernacle with two large marble angels in adoration. The author has established that the altar was made in the tradition of analogous works produced by Giorgio Massari, and that the accurate date of its construction is 1778, the year carved at the rear of the tabernacle dome. Moreover, models have been found for the Ceregnano angels, namely the marble statues of angels at the high altar of the Benedictine church of St Mary in Zadar, produced between 1759 and 1762 by the famous Venetian sculptor Giovanni Maria Morlaiter. More precisely, the Ceregnano angels were made after Morlaiter’s terracotta models for the angels of Zadar, preserved at the Ca’Rezzonico museum in Venice. A stylistic analysis of sculptural decoration at the Ceregnano altar has allowed the author to attribute it to Giovanni Maria’s son Gregorio Morlaiter (Venice, 1738 – 1784), heir to his father’s workshop. The same master has been attributed with a small tabernacle with putti installed in 1776 on the high altar of the church of Sant’Andrea della Zirada in Venice.


1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Bergin

In the eighteenth century Louis XV's minister, Cardinal Dubois, defended himself against papal criticism of his appetite for church benefices by ordering that a list of benefices held by his seventeenth-century counterparts be prepared and sent to Rome. It was his way of proving that he was much less voracious than they had been.His defence serves to remind the historian of the extent to which the ancien régime church was dominated by powerful families and ministers, who enriched themselves considerably by amassing wealthy benefices. However, none of these cardinal-ministers, from Richelieu to Dubois, succeeded in founding ecclesiastical dynasties capable of preserving intact after their death the ecclesiastical possessions they had acquired; dynasties of this type had practically vanished by the mid-seventeenth century, having fallen foul of both the crown and of church reformers. While drawing enormous incomes from their benefices, Richelieu, Mazarin and Dubois accepted that their benefices, like their other offices, should be at the king's disposal after their death. This had not always been the case. Had Dubois’ historical curiosity been more disinterested, he would have discovered that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ecclesiastical dynasties of varying importance and staying-power had flourished within the French church, characterized by their ability to acquire and transmit large numbers of wealthy and prestigious benefices to family members over several generations. The minimum require ment for success was the breeding of younger sons and daughters prepared to ‘enter the church’ in order to perpetuate dynastic control of benefices.


Ars Adriatica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Damir Tulić

Stylistic changes in a sculptor’s oeuvre are simultaneously a challenge and a cause of dilemmas for researchers. This is particularly true when attempting to identify the early works of a sculptor while the influence of his teacher was still strong. This article focuses on the Venetian sculptor Giovanni Bonazza (Venice, 1654 – Padua, 1736) and attributes to him numerous new works both in marble and in wood, all of which are of uniform, high quality. Bonazza’s teacher was the sculptor Michele Fabris, called l’Ongaro (Bratislava, c.1644 – Venice, 1684), to whom the author of the article attributes a marble statue of Our Lady of the Rosary on the island of San Servolo, in the Venetian lagoon, which has until now been ascribed to Bonazza. The marble bust of Giovanni Arsenio Priuli, the podestat of Koper, is also attributed to the earliest phase of Bonazza’s work; it was set up on the façade of the Praetorian Palace at Koper in 1679. This bust is the earliest known portrait piece sculpted by the twenty-five-year old artist. The marble relief depicting the head of the Virgin, in the hospice of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, ought to be dated to the 1690s. The marble statue of the Virgin and Child located on the garden wall by the Ponte Trevisan bridge in Venice can be recognized as Bonazza’s work from the early years of the eighteenth century and as an important link in the chronological chain of several similar statues he sculpted during his fruitful career. Bonazza is also the sculptor of the marble busts of the young St John and Mary from the library of the monastery of San Lazzaro on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni in the Venetian lagoon, but also the bust of Christ from the collection at Castel Thun in the Trentino-Alto Adige region; they can all be dated to the 1710s or the 1720s. The article pays special attention to a masterpiece which has not been identified as the work of Giovanni Bonazza until now: the processional wooden crucifix from the church of Sant’Andrea in Padua, which can be dated to the 1700s and which, therefore, precedes three other wooden crucifixes that have been identified as his. Another work attributed to Bonazza is a large wooden gloriole with clouds, cherubs and a putto, above the altar in the Giustachini chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine at Padua. The article attributes two stone angels and a putto on the attic storey of the high altar in the church of Santa Caterina on the island of Mazzorbo in the Venetian lagoon to Giovanni’s son Francesco Bonazza (Venice, c.1695 – 1770). Finally, Antonio Bonazza (Padua, 1698 – 1763), the most talented and well-known of Giovanni Bonazza’s sons, is identified as the sculptor of the exceptionally beautiful marble tabernacle on the high altar of the parish church at Kali on the island of Ugljan. The sculptures which the author of the article attributes to the Bonazza family and to Giovanni Bonazza’s teacher, l’Ongaro, demonstrate that the oeuvres of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Venetian masters are far from being closed and that we are far from knowing the final the number of their works. Moreover, it has to be said that not much is known about Giovanni’s works in wood which is why every new addition to his oeuvre with regard to this medium is important since it fills the gaps in a complex and stylistically varied production of this great Venetian sculptor.


2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-65
Author(s):  
Charles Burns

The Vatican Secret Archive is a treasure-trove of material, a mirror reflecting, in one all-embracing chronological and geographical sweep, the multifarious aspects of papal activity through the course of many centuries. But Aladdin in this cave needs to be able to find his treasure. So for him the Index Room is the Holy of Holies. This article tells the story of the prime begetter of the Index Room, Cardinal Giuseppe Garampi (d. 1792) and the transformation of his 820,000 ‘slips in a shoebox’, intended for the writing of a history of the Church, into the Schedario Garampi, an indispensable tool for archival research.


1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 129-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. McHardy

It is a truth widely recognized, though perhaps insufficiently emphasized, that late-medieval England contained large numbers of unbeneficed clergy. The difficulty of studying such men lies in their elusiveness; they made little impact on the obvious source for a study of the English Church during this period, the bishops’ registers (apart from their appearances in the ordinations lists), for these are essentially concerned with benefices and benefice-holders. There is, however, one class of material which tells us much about the unbeneficed, namely the assessments made in connection with clerical poll-taxes. Levied in the years 1377, 1379, 1380, and 1381, these poll-taxes demanded what was virtually a clerical census on each occasion. The resulting returns are a boon to church historians and provide an unparalleled amount of information about the unbeneficed clergy, described in these documents as ‘chaplains’ and ‘clerks’. If we are to have a realistic picture of the late-medieval Church, the unbeneficed should receive more attention. Moreover, it is suggested that an examination of this class can throw light on the relationship between the Church and wealth during this period.


1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 320-332
Author(s):  
Martin Dudley

For nearly 900 years the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great has functioned as an expression of wider religious moods, movements, and aspirations. Founded in 1123 by Rahere, a courtier of Henry I, at a time when the Augustinian Canons gained a brief ascendancy over older forms of religious life, it represents the last flowering of English Romanesque architecture. The Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, became a house of Dominicans under Mary, and saw the flames that consumed the Smithfield martyrs. Since Elizabeth’s reign it has been a parish church serving a small and poor but populous area within the City of London but outside the walls. Its history is fairly well documented. Richard Rich lived in the former Lady Chapel. Walter Mildmay worshipped, and was buried, there. John Wesley preached there. Hogarth was baptized there. Parts of the church had been turned over to secular use. There was a blacksmith’s forge in the north transept beyond the bricked-up arch of the crossing and the smoke from the forge often filled the building. A school occupied the north triforium gallery. The Lady Chapel was further divided, and early in the eighteenth century Samuel Palmer, a printer, had his letter foundry there. The young Benjamin Franklin worked there for a year in 172 s and recorded the experience in his autobiography. The church, surrounded by houses, taverns, schools, chapels, stables, and warehouses, was a shadow of its medieval glory; but between 1828 and 1897 it changed internally and externally almost beyond recognition. The process of change continued over the next forty years and indeed continues still. These changes in architecture and furnishings were closely linked to a changed attitude to medieval buildings, to issues of churchmanship, and to liturgical developments.


Author(s):  
Ágnes Gyetvainé Balogh

The church of Szigetmonostor, together with the parish building in front, and the late chanter house next to it, is the characteristic complex of its environment. Its plan with the middle tower façade solution is a classic example of Baroque church architecture of the eighteenth century. The most valuable part of the building is the late Baroque pulpit renovated while keeping its original appearance.Szigetmonostor – earlier Monostor – a municipality in Pest County on the Szentendre Island came into the possession of the Zichy family after the Turkish rule. In the 1730s, Ferenc Zichy put the tenure in pawn to Gábor Horányi, a servant judge in Pest County, who started greater developments here by building a castle (today the parish) and a church in the 1740s. The tower was built in front of the main façade a few years after the completion of the nave. The Vienna Court Chamber acquired the manor from the Zichy family in 1766 after a long lawsuit, also redeeming Monostor from the Horányi family. In 1774, the master masons Mihály János Hamon and Jakab Gföller were commissioned to survey the buildings of the manor, which came into the possession of the Crown from the Zichys. Their survey plans illustrate the church with the small teaching house and church garden next to it. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the church underwent several renewals and renovations and minor alterations that could be tracked with the help of records and Canonica Visitatios.


Ars Adriatica ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Bojan Goja

The article presents new information about the life and work of goldsmith Stefano Piazza in Zadar, based on the archival investigation. In 1691 he was commissioned by the fraternity of the Blessed Virgin of the Snow, to make a silver cover for the painting of the Virgin displayed on the marble altar, which the Venetian altar makers Girolamo and Francesco Garzotti made for the fraternity in the church of St Donatus around 1675. The cover was made of silver plate procured in Venice, which Piazza polished and decorated. Neither the painting nor the silver cover have been preserved, and we do not know what they looked like but it is likely that the cover was made in a similar way as other silver painting covers - covering a large part of the painting and with openings for the faces and hands of the figures. Apart from the already known piece of information about the 1691 silver andlestick, it has been established that during 1692 and 1693, Piazza made a series of other metalwork objects, mostly liturgical, for the fraternity of Croatian and Albanian soldiers in the service of the Venetian Republic, dedicated to St Jerome, which gathered in the church of St Simeon for which they had a marble altar made. These objects included a silver figure of Christ, the covers for the parish register, chalice and paten of gilt silver, a silver aspergillus, four silver candlesticks and a pax. Stefano Piazza was a member of the fraternity of St Sylvester (also known as della Pietà e della Misericordia) which had its seat in the Zadar church dedicated to the same saint, and for which the fraternity  steward made a list of reliquaries and other silver objects in 1690. He died in Venice on 28 September 1703. His son Francesco (Zadar, 21 December 1684 - 17 September 1721) is also mentioned in the sources as a goldsmith.  Stefano Piazza (? - Venice, 7 September 1703) was probably the son of a north Italian goldsmith Francesco of Stefano, who is mentioned as being in Zadar between 1652 and 1668. Given that according to the available information not a single work of Stefano Piazza has been preserved,  nothing can be said about his skills as a craftsman or artistic achievements, but it can be assumed that he was a respectable goldsmith who was frequently contacted by local commissioners because of his skill in making a variety of objects. Other archival data about his life and work are also published here, as well as information about other goldsmiths who worked in Zadar in the late  sixteenth and during the seventeenth century.


Ars Adriatica ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvija Banić

The Museum of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Múzeum) at Budapest houses an embroidered Gothic antependium which belonged to the church of St Chrysogonus, which was the seat of the Benedictine Abbey at Zadar. At an unspecified time, the antependium became part of the collection of Zsigmund Bubics, an art historian, collector and the bishop of Košice in present-day Slovakia from 1887 to 1906, and was donated to the Museum of Applied Arts in 1909. It measures 94 by 190 cm. The majority of the antependium’s surface is filled with the figures of saints set beneath three pointed, Gothic arches. The central field is occupied by the enthroned Virgin with the Christ Child, in the left field is St Chrysogonus and in the right St Benedict. In the upper section of the antependium one can see the busts of two saints who might be identified as St Gregory the Pope and St Donatus. Along the lateral edges of this triptych-like antependium are vertical borders, at the centres of which are niches with two small standing female saints who wear crowns (St Scholastica and St Anastasia). To the left of the Virgin’s throne is the figure of a donor depicted kneeling with his hands clasped in prayer, which has unfortunately not been provided with an inscription. It is clear, however, that he is wearing the Benedictine habit with a somewhat over-emphasized hood falling down his back. The Benedictine donor might be identified as one of the abbots of the monastery of St Chrysogonus. It is suggested in the article that this may have been John de Ontiaco (Joannes de Onciache) from the bishopric of Lyon, who was the abbot of the monastery of St Chrysogonus from 1345 to 1377. The author argues that the antependium was produced in a weaving workshop in Venice during the late 1360s or early 1370s, on the basis of comparisons with similar contemporary painted and embroidered artworks. Based on the iconographic programme which was depicted on the antependium, but also on the information found in archival records, the author proposes that the antependium was made for the altar of St Chrysogonus which stood in the north apse of the abbey church. Although it has not been established when the antependium left Zadar, based on the similarities between the crimson satin fabric, which replaced the original surface on which the embroidery was applied, on the antependium from the Church of St Mary at Zadar, and the antependium from the Church of St Chrysogonus, it is stated that both interventions were made in the Benedictine Convent of St Mary at Zadar during a short period of time in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. This is also understood as evidence that at that time the antependium from the Church of St Chrysogonus was still being carefully kept at Zadar.


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