Europska renesansa antičke Pule

The book explores the impact of antiquities in Pula, Croatia, on Renaissance art and architecture, revealing it as a pan-European phenomenon. This is the first comprehensive study dedicated to the Renaissance critical fortune of the three still preserved, and one relatively recently vanished antique buildings and the most exhaustive on a single town featuring important antiquities outside Rome. Its interdisciplinary approach explores the historical, sociological and literary data to shed more light on an art historical problem, namely the circulation of knowledge and the borrowing from Pula antiquities spanning from Naples and Venice to France, Germany, the Low Countries, England and Scotland. The book starts with the description of the town's Renaissance form (forma urbis), using the voice of Antoine de Ville, an early 17th-century engineer writing about the small town in Istria and its deep bay, serving as the first stop on Rotta di Levante, a vital mercantile route between Venice and the East. Renaissance Pula's economy was partially based on the commerce of the building stone called Pietra d'Istria, which brought to Istria numerous architects and stone-cutters from Italy. Town's society, with communal oligarchy, presided by rotating Venetian officials, is described according to another Renaissance testimony, a 16th-century dialogue on Pula whose author is here identified as Pietro Dragano. Pula was also a bishopric, which brought several important ecclesiastic figures to the town, such as Biagio Molin or Altobello Averoldi, enabling the vast circulation of knowledge on the town antiquities. During the 15th century, the cathedral and municipal palace underwent crucial renovations, their forms reflecting the taste of the artistic centres such as Venice and Padua, eluding the inspiration by local antique buildings. The second chapter investigates the impact of the antiquities on the town's identity (genus loci) through the narrative of its founding myth as given by Greek, and Roman authors such as Pliny the Elder, who defines Pula founded by Colchians, the perceivers of the Argonauts during the flee with a Golden Fleece, while the second, Roman Pula, was later founded by Julius Cesar. The Renaissance authors such as Dragano accept and develop this narrative, enriching it with medieval readings, and giving the Greek and imperial connotations to Pula antiquities. The role of antique ruins in everyday life is also described, the approach oscillating between the protection and the destruction, one also being able to rent the amphitheatre, according to the town's statute, on a yearly basis. The third chapter delineates the construction of the town's image in the contemporary eyes (imago urbis), through the testimonies of the travellers, from pilgrims to merchants and Venetian officials, revealing a wide range of readings depending on expectations and level of preparation, but always including the experience of antiquities. Humanistic circles in Dalmatia and Italy were understandably interested in inscriptions, and several Renaissance sylloge contain Pula material, thus confirming the circulation of knowledge on Pula as an antique town between the learned. A thorough investigation of the contemporary literary sources mentioning the Istrian town enriches the panorama, including Dante, Boccaccio, Marcantonio Flaminio, Paolo Marsi and Pietro Dragano. The fourth central chapter of the book is concerned with the reflexions of Pula antiquities in the Renaissance visual arts. It follows the chronological trajectory of their impact, concentrating on the Arch of the Sergii, in 15th-century Italian art and architecture, establishing the importance of this model for such artists as Jacopo Bellini (in his Louvre sketchbook) and Andrea Mantegna (at Camera Picta in Mantua and his Triumphs at Hampton Court). Pula arch is also a signal of the entrance of Early Renaissance forms in Venice (Arsenale gate) and Naples (Aragonese arch at Castelnuovo), raising the question of circulation of its forms, with possible answers in the reconstruction of the web of personal contacts between humanist on both sides of the Adriatic. The Arch of Sergii also appears on the pages of Hypnerotomachia Polifili, a famous oniric novel/architectural treatise printed in Venice in 1499, here read as a possible reflection of Pula - the lost city of once ruling Castropola family, who in the 15th century lived in Treviso, a place where the novel has been apparently written. Italian architects of the 16th century took great interest in Pula antiquities, as almost thirty Renaissance drawings and graphic representations suggest, assembled and analysed in the second part of the fourth chapter. Architectural drawings were copied and compared, and Pula antiquities, especially the Arch of Sergii, circulated in the leading Florentine and Roman workshops such as those of the Sangallo family or Raphael Sanzio. Moreover, the analysis of the works of Bramante in Lombardy and Rome and some compositions by Baldassare Peruzzi reveals that Pula antiquities reflected in the design of such important Renaissance masterpieces as Palazzo Caprini and the so-called tegurio in Saint Peter's basilica. In Padua and Venice, the experience of Istrian town impacts Giovanni Maria Falconetto and Tullio Lombardo in their early 16th-century designs, marking the entrance of the more rigorously classical language in the region. Pula antiquities are reproduced or mentioned on the pages of architectural treatises by Sebastiano Serlio, Andrea Palladio and Vincenzo Scamozzi, ensuring the circulation of knowledge on the Istrian town via printed books. Essential are drawings by the most influential architect of the 16th century, Andrea Palladio, now in the collection of Royal Institute of British Architects in London and in Museo civico in Vicenza, as they not only served as inspiration for his own designs of churches and palaces but also represented a vital resource for later British architects, such as Inigo Jones or Lord Burlington. Finally, the last part of the fourth chapter is dedicated to the circulation of knowledge on Pula antiquities in Germany, France, the Low Countries and Great Britain. Durer incorporated the paired columns arch in his large woodcut of the triumphal arch for the emperor Maximilan Ist, while temporary arches based on Pula arch decorated the triumphal entrances of the Habsburg and Valois rulers into numerous European towns. The all'antica arches with paired columns, popularised by triumphal entries, are also present in the French architecture of the second part of the 16th century, such as the jubé of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois in Paris by Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon and the so-called towers of orders, or monumental entrances, to castles as important as Ecouen, Louvre and Anet by leading French architects of the period. In Great Britain, the most important examples of usage of the forms of Pula arch are the porch of the large country house of Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire and the portal of Chapel Royal in the castle Stirling in Scotland, possibly inspired by temporary arches of the English merchants for the triumphal entry in Antwerp and by Italian examples seen by Englishmen who travelled for study or business. Pula antiquities, therefore, have a rich and essential, previously unacknowledged impact on European Renaissance culture, especially in the field of visual arts, delineated for the first time in the book The European Renaissance of the antique Pula.