Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Unknown Artists: Croatian
9th-century, 10th-century, 11th-century, 12th-century
Nin, Croatia: Ulica Petra Zoranića 8
89%
Church of the Holy Cross. 9th century
This masterpiece of Pre-Romanesque architecture in Croatia would be even better if it were better preserved: it's all plaster at this point, which is more of a minor annoyance than it is a major aesthetic issue, since we don't primarily appreciate these churches for their surface effects. Instead, we appreciate them — experience them — for the nearly inconceivable firmness and groundedness of their designs, for the unitary figures they cut before our eyes in an instant, for how little it seems their makers allowed the exigencies of space and human use to dictate their structure, and for how, instead, these buildings affirm themselves as indefectible and intrinsically centered singular objects inside of which our presence might only be permitted insofar as we do not transgress our bodies' subsidiary position with respect to the building's total order (the interior space of this church, as with that of other similar early-medieval Croatian churches, is emphatically a negative that's afforded by a particular positive, rather than a positive established around and at the behest of a particular negative). The Church of the Holy Cross in Nin is the greatest of such old Croatian churches because, unlike the Church of Saint Donatus in Zadar or the Church of the Holy Trinity in Split, it is not "all apse," but instead possesses two squat transepts and a nave, in the armpits of which tumid apses emerge like growths. While the iterative, endless rotundity of other churches is charming and perhaps less complicatedly suggests the deep metaphysical centredness that is characteristic of this style, this building's juxtaposition of curvature and flatness forces it to aver its unity through and against its immediate appearance of variegation. It does so partly through the upward projection of its central lantern, partly through the asymmetricality of its interior, which gives the appearance that the entrance of the church and the far outer edge of its nave are compressing in towards eachother. (TFS, 2025)
Zadar, Croatia: Archaeological Museum Zadar
88%
Pluteus from the Church of Saint Domenica. c1035. Carved stone
A great tragedy in art's history is that such plutei as this — as well as pretty much all other original decorative elements — no longer exist in situ in Croatia's great Pre-Romanesque churches, which are today, falsely, rather spare. Yet the experience which this balustrade offers up as an isolated work of art is remarkable, if incomplete. (It bears mentioning that what the category of "art" helps us uniquely to do is to confront such incompletion in a way that can actually seem to approximate, perhaps even revive, the wholeness which aesthetic objects had in their own historical moments.) What makes this object special is the conflict between the depth of its carving and the schematic flatness of the figures that emerge from it: these figures are at once stark reliefs and embellished planes. This serves, for one, to isolate — discretize — each figure, while also providing all of them altogether ample open air to establish spatial relationships with each other (see the crowned character's pointing finger negated by the upturned toddler in the panel beside him, or the angel's swoop between two panels to set off a sort of pulse rightwards that isn't counterbalanced till the inward lean of the three kings at the left carving's right edge). For two, the coexistent depth/flatness thing manages to equate, and thereby to integrate, the biblical scenes with the ornamental features — knotwork and floriforms and stylized animals. It is rare for any art to achieve such parity between its narrative and its decorative components. (TFS, 2025)
Zadar, Croatia: Poljana Pape Aleksandra III 1
86%
Church of Saint Donatus. 9th century
Were it not for the masterpiece in Nin this would be the jewel of Pre-Romanesque architecture in Croatia, and it is certainly the most magnificent (not to say largest) example of the style. Characteristic of such churches, its defining feature is its large central column, flanked around its circumference by tumorous apses. (This building's apses are relatively less protuberant than those of some of the others, which is neither good or bad aesthetically.) This results in a series of continuously resolved and recurring spatial contradictions between the outside and the inside of the structure: the body of the church feels tight, but the fluting around the perimeter provided by the apses causes all this constrictive energy to shoot upwards and concentrate itself in the church's peak, nearer heaven; the central column, as in all such Croatian church's, feels exceptionally unified and whole, but this is disturbed by the outward push of each apse till in turn it's resolved and brought back toward the center by the apses' symmetrical ordering. (TFS, 2025)
Zadar, Croatia: Poljana Pape Aleksandra III 1
81%
Church of Saint Chrysogonus. 12th century
The Romanesque in early Croatian architecture represents either a corruption of the endemic style that had developed in the region throughout the 9th and 10th centuries, or a flourishing into extravagance of those heavy and austere forms. This church is an example of the latter. The famous apses of preceding Croatian architecture have been stuck to the back of a long rectangle and adorned. Rather than conveying centered wholeness, they demonstrate extension, even conclusion — there's a physiognomy of progression, of something other than simple being, that's been interposed. While the grounded unity of the Pre-Romanesque was too much for this new, Western style to overcome completely — there's a slight pedestrian quality, perhaps an unease with the true heavenly, that marks this building and detracts from its aesthetic power — the grappling of two styles is nevertheless a spectacle. (TFS, 2025)
Split, Croatia: Sutroičin put
80%
Church of the Holy Trinity. 9th century
If not the greatest of the great Pre-Romanesque churches in Croatia, this one seems to me to be the paradigm. It seems that way because it is the most totally "apsed-out" (if I can coin the phrase) of all of them. This building is simply a fat central column ensconced by so many columnar protrusions (the apses), which makes it look like some amoeba in the process of division, or like a woman surrounded by her kids clutching at her skirts. The upshot of this method is that the church manages to convey infinitude — multiplicity — and oneness simultaneously. No matter how profuse its form might become, it would ever remain centered, a single thing. The few churches in this idiom that are better than Split's Church of the Holy Trinity manage to introduce diversity to this basic format without undermining its tendency towards coalescence and unity. (TFS, 2025)
Zadar, Croatia: Archaeological Museum Zadar
74%
Pluteus from the Cathedral of Saint Anastasia. 9th century. Carved stone
This pluteus has the one essential structural feature that makes other similar examples of Pre-Romanesque Croatian relief carving great, but it doesn't quite make good on it in the way that, say, the pluteus from the Church of Saint Domenica does. Namely, its carving is deep but its surface is flat and unified with no one carved element projecting or protruding, such that each individual figure appears almost isolated and complete in itself, yet there is a single plane that all the figures share and that unifies them visually. What it lacks, however, is any narrative element; the thing that makes other such plutei great is the degree of integration between action and ornament (idea and its expression) which this carving style facilitates. This carving is balanced and varied and finely wrought and dense, and its pattern develops and contradicts itself in astounding ways (see the mutual responsiveness of the botanical forms that surround each of the three crosses), but it is ultimately only a virtuosic demonstration of arrangement and masterful technique. (TFS, 2025)
Nin, Croatia: Route D-306
72%
Church of Saint Nicholas. 11th century-12th century
The crenellated tower is a later addition to this Pre-Romanesque church. It looks cool, but it's a historical and aesthetic shame, as it competes with the trident of projecting cylinders to define the church's character. Like other Croatian churches from this period, this building (apart from the tower) is defined by the tight hug its apses give to its central column. Being a bit later, however, than the churches at Zadar and Split, this church seems already to have been subjected to some westernizing: its cruciform arrangement (even though this has been achieved through tightly ringed semicircles) is a departure from the flat centrifiguation of the earlier churches. This, then, seems to be a transitional form, with all of both the intrigue and the driftlessness of stylistic transition. (TFS, 2025)
Zadar, Croatia: Ulica Dalmatinskog Sabora 7
55%
Church of Saint Andrew and Saint Peter the Elder. 5th century and 9th century (with Unknown Artists (Roman))
This church (now a tchotchke shop) was constructed in two phases, first by Romans in the 5th century and then by Croats in the 9th. The Roman section is of historical, though not artistic interest. The Croatian section, which is chronologically pre-Romanesque but is (as scholars have pointed out) a typological curiosity, is aesthetically compelling, though in a more minor and less complete way than most contemporaneous Croatian churches. The mess of arch and nested apse, all supported improbably by that one central pillar, is musical (albeit disordered). Were this cacophony to have extended to the church's exterior, we might have had on our hands a compelling sculpture in the vein of other similar buildings. Unfortunately, it's all squared in, leaving the energy produced by all these portals and resulting forms to sort of ricochet but never settle into a definite idea. Curious, though not masterful. (TFS, 2025)
Rovanjska, Croatia: Obala Ante Mateka
44%
Church of Saint George. 9th century-11th century
This is the weakest of the great Pre-Romanesque churches in Croatia, though perhaps it's not the building's fault. The long nave is not original, and its addition likely destroyed an existing apse, which might have initially balanced the composition. Too, the stone wall that meets the church at the intersection of apse and transept further breaks up the structure, which ought to instead appear isolated and unified. It's crowded and choked and situated and altogether changed, whereas the best of these buildings are always (even when they've been corrupted by time) glaring symbols in isolation of fortitude and spiritual (structural) oneness. Shame. (TFS, 2025)