Ana Šverko
Ana Šverko is an architect and historian of architecture, currently serving as a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Center in Split. Her research focuses on the representation of place in travel writing and across various media, as well as on the architectural history of the Eastern Adriatic in a cross-cultural context. She has participated in several research projects, including Harvard University's “From Riverbed to Seashore” (2014-15), conceived and led by Prof. Alina Payne. She was awarded the Paul Mellon Centre Yale University Fellowship for her research into British architectural history in 2020. She also conducted research at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, in 2022. She participated in study programs run by the Attingham Trust in 2006, 2009, 2014, and 2023. She is currently leading the HRZZ project “‘Where East Meets West’: Travel Narratives and the Fashioning of Dalmatian Artistic Heritage in Modern Europe (c. 1675 – c. 1941)”. Her publications contribute to the fields of architectural history, travel writing history, cultural heritage, and visual culture, with a specific focus on the Mediterranean region.
Address: Institute of Art History - Cvito Fiskovic Center, Kruziceva 7, 21 000 Split, Croatia
Address: Institute of Art History - Cvito Fiskovic Center, Kruziceva 7, 21 000 Split, Croatia
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Following the workshop, from December 12 to 14, an academic conference entitled “Travel Narratives and the Fashioning of a Dalmatian Artistic Heritage in Modern Europe (c. 1675 – c. 1941)” (2023-27) was held. This event was open to the public and is part of a project under the same title, which is being run by the Institute of Art History and funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. This project is a continuation of the Institute of Art History’s earlier initiative, “Dalmatia – a Destination of the European Grand Tour in the 18th and 19th Century” (2014–2017), also funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. It was within the framework of this earlier project that the annual Discovering Dalmatia programmes were first launched. These programmes have continued beyond the official conclusion of the project, evolving and thriving over the years.
Gianluca Garagnin (1764 – 1841), a prominent physiocrat from Trogir, dedicated vast majority of his writings to topics of education in agriculture and the organisation of agricultural schools. His was a vision of Dalmatia as a land prospering on
the basis of strong and modern agriculture, and excellence in education in the spirit of physiocracy, respectively.
Work on the family estates helped him to devise and organise agricultural estates for the purpose of agricultural school, the pinnacle of his vision of unity of scientific, educational, and practical work. This vision is visible in the projects of Gianluca Garagnin – two spatial plans of estate where he marked the allocation ofeach building and three designs with elaborated layouts of some of those buildings – all kept in State Archives in Split. In these designs he developed and concretize the ideas previously set forth in words.
Following the workshop, from December 12 to 14, an academic conference entitled “Travel Narratives and the Fashioning of a Dalmatian Artistic Heritage in Modern Europe (c. 1675 – c. 1941)” (2023-27) was held. This event was open to the public and is part of a project under the same title, which is being run by the Institute of Art History and funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. This project is a continuation of the Institute of Art History’s earlier initiative, “Dalmatia – a Destination of the European Grand Tour in the 18th and 19th Century” (2014–2017), also funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. It was within the framework of this earlier project that the annual Discovering Dalmatia programmes were first launched. These programmes have continued beyond the official conclusion of the project, evolving and thriving over the years.
Gianluca Garagnin (1764 – 1841), a prominent physiocrat from Trogir, dedicated vast majority of his writings to topics of education in agriculture and the organisation of agricultural schools. His was a vision of Dalmatia as a land prospering on
the basis of strong and modern agriculture, and excellence in education in the spirit of physiocracy, respectively.
Work on the family estates helped him to devise and organise agricultural estates for the purpose of agricultural school, the pinnacle of his vision of unity of scientific, educational, and practical work. This vision is visible in the projects of Gianluca Garagnin – two spatial plans of estate where he marked the allocation ofeach building and three designs with elaborated layouts of some of those buildings – all kept in State Archives in Split. In these designs he developed and concretize the ideas previously set forth in words.
From Constantinople to the Adriatic, and Back
Academic Conference
DISCOVERING DALMATIA X
Travel Narratives and the Fashioning of a Dalmatian Artistic Heritage in Modern Europe (c. 1675 – c. 1941)
Journal Promotion
Život umjetnosti (Life of Art)
Vol. 113, No. 2, 2023
Public Presentation
“Where East Meets West”: Travel Narratives and the Fashioning of a Dalmatian Artistic Heritage in Modern Europe (c. 1675 – c. 1941)
(TraveloguesDalmatia)
Scientific Committee
Basile Baudez (Princeton University, Department of Art and Archaeology)
Joško Belamarić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Mateo Bratanić (University of Zadar, Department of History)
Iain Gordon Brown (Honorary Fellow, National Library of Scotland)
Hrvoje Gržina (Croatian State Archives)
Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University London)
Cvijeta Pavlović (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Comparative Literature)
Frances Sands (Sir John Soane’s Museum)
Marko Špikić (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Art History)
Ana Šverko (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Elke Katharina Wittich (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
Organizing Committee
Joško Belamarić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Tomislav Bosnić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Mateo Bratanić (University of Zadar, Department of History)
Ana Ćurić (Institute of Art History)
Matko Matija Marušić (Institute of Art History)
Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University London)
Cvijeta Pavlović (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Ana Šverko (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Knjiga na originalan način prikazuje odnos Dioklecijanove palače i suvremenog grada. Javni prostor Palače i grada koji je oko nje izrastao autorica sagledava kroz povijest te analizom Palače kao arhitektonsko-urbanističkog modela, kao i njezina značenja i položaja u suvremenom kontekstu. U knjizi se definiraju neki ključni problemi funkcioniranja javnog prostora grada i nudi teorijski pristup za integraciju naslijeđene urbane matrice u suvremeni život, upućujući na disciplinu urbanističkog projektiranja, kojoj je zadatak regulirati odnose između planerskog, urbanističkog i arhitektonskog djelovanja. Tako jedna povijesna priča, promatrana u kontekstu cjelovitog funkcioniranja grada, postaje dio promišljanja suvremenog urbanog života. Iza knjige, uz autoricu, stoji tim iznimnih stručnjaka: Karin Šerman i Joško Belamarić kao urednici, te recenzenti Hildegard Auf- Franić, Gorana Banić, Anči Leburić, Marijan Hržić, Tomislav Premerl i Ivan Rogić, uz predgovor Donlyna Lyndona s američkog Sveučilišta Berkeley. Knjiga je koncipirana u 11 poglavlja: Dioklecijanova palača i Split: definiranje problema, Uloga istraživačkih metoda u očuvanju grada, Pogled unazad: morfogeneza Splita, Razvijati i konzervirati, Suvremeni javni prostor i život u povijesnoj jezgri, Prostor, mjesto, ne- mjesto, Identitet i mjesto, Grad i kairos, Grad nije kuća, Grad je kuća, Mjerilo 1:1 ili planiranje dana.
Within the programme, a workshop was held on the topic entitled (Un)Mapping Diocletian’s Palace: Research methods in the understanding of the experience and meaning of place. The workshop is devoted to a monument that has been one of the most powerful magnets for Grand Tourist in their stay on the Croatian Adriatic.
Matteo Mazzalupi gave a lecture entitled Painting in Ancona in the 15th century with several parallels with Dalmatian painting, derived from his doctoral dissertation, and from the articles that he has published in the meantime. The lecture was held within the context of the academic project of the Institute of Art History entitled Fine arts and communication of power in the early modern period (1450-1800): historical Croatian regions at the borders of Central Europe and the Mediterranean, under the aegis of the Croatian Science Foundation.
Attempting one more time to weigh the arguments that the Zadar Forum, with all the stratification of historical monuments of two millennia that it reflects, is indeed a phenomenon of the world heritage, as part of the programme Discovering Dalmatia a scholarly colloquium entitled Zadar: space, time, architecture. Four new views was also organised. Four lectures were devoted to diverse aspects of the development of the architecture and town planning of Zadar and its renovation will put forward supporting arguments for the proposition that the historical centre of the city possesses indeed all the characteristics of exceptional universal value.
The concluding part of this week-long programme consisted of an international conference entitled Discovering Dalmatia. Dalmatia in 18th and 19th century travelogues, pictures and photographs, in which these topics will be analysed and evaluated in terms of literary theory and the theory and history of art and architecture.
The workshop and the conference stemed from the research project Dalmatia – a destination of the European Grand Tour in the 18th and the 19th century of the Institute of Art History, under the aegis of the Croatian Science Foundation.
The concept of classical architecture includes the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. Later styles, including Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, and several Neo-Historicist styles, relied on and built upon it in creative ways. It was therefore classical architecture – its vocabulary, architectural elements, principles, and typologies – that determined the development and understanding of architecture generally. As a result, there are numerous excellent glossaries of classical architecture in a variety of languages. Until recently, such a valuable terminological resource did not exist in Croatian, and as a result special field terminology in academic and professional publications was frequently imprecise and inconsistent. English terminology was frequently used uncritically and unsystematically, without considering whether the use of such terms was semantically appropriate. In particular, little effort was made to determine if these adopted terms were compatible with the rules relating to phonology, morphology, and word formation in the Croatian language.
The first part of this analysis therefore focuses on the all-encompassing classical architecture terminology project that was carried out through collaboration between art and architecture historians, conservators, and experts from the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics. Between 2018 and 2020, this project provided the groundwork for the development of more appropriate and precise terminology in the field of classical architecture. In June 2021, the glossary was finally evaluated and released to the public as part of the searchable national terminology database Struna (http://struna.ihjj.hr/browse/?pid=48). It thus became the first structured linguistic tool in the Croatian language for understanding and studying the field of architecture from the earliest periods to the present, and was available to the broadest possible audience.
From the moment that the interdisciplinary team began working on it, the development of a traditional term base for classical architecture, and the organisation of the linguistic materials it contains, were considered only the necessary first step in the development of the glossary, a kind of intermediate stage between the initial idea of systematising the terminology and an illustrated glossary. Because the language of architecture is largely a visual language, while working on the terminology the team also selected visual materials that related to the terms in question. In doing so, they remained constantly aware of the fact that Croatian classical monuments offered an excellent source for illustrating classical historical forms. Upon conclusion of the terminological project, therefore, the team immediately began working on the next phase, which resulted in the project The First Illustrated Croatian Glossary of Classical Architecture, With Translations Into Four Languages. The project has already been partly funded by the private Adris Foundation and is set to conclude in 2023 with the publication of the illustrated glossary.
The second part of the present analysis will focus on the project team’s current methodologies for transforming the terminological entries relating to a particular architectural term into more detailed entries for a future vocabulary or lexicon. Moreover, it will discuss in more detail the refinement and systematisation of numerous terms and the scope of the work done on terms for a more specialised subset of users, with the understanding that in contrast to the publicly available term base, the illustrated glossary will be used more by specialists and students. On the editorial level, moreover, consultation of the best international publications relating to this topic forms an important part of the work, with the aim of selecting an appropriate academically trained illustrator and the best possible adaptation of the Croatian linguistic materials to the selected visual materials. Finally, it is important to note the international element that contributes to the quality of the project: the inclusion of a team of consultants from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Their involvement makes this project even more valuable, as it ensures that the Croatian glossary will be linked with the structured professional resources that form part of their Getty Vocabularies programme.
This paper will conclude with a discussion of how a field that was fairly unsystematic when it came to terminology, as the field of Croatian classical architecture terminology was, can be transformed through five years of interdisciplinary work into a well-rounded digital and print resource for future professionals, allowing them to continue working with confidence on national heritage in an international context.
works of Adam, Clérisseau and Cassas – Split, November 2-29,
2014, organized by the Institute of Art History, arises out of the
installation research project Dalmatia – a destination of European
Grand Tour in the 18th and the 19th century (2014-2017) of the
Institute of Art History, under the aegis of the Croatian Science
Foundation. The conference is financed by the Croatian Ministry of
Science, Education and Sports and the City of Split.
Researchers from several countries responded to the invitation to
explore the role of Diocletian's Palace in the work of Robert Adam,
Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Louis-François Cassas, as well as the
influence of Diocletian's Palace on the development of European
neo-classicism.
The papers are divided into four groups. The section subtitled
Reading the Place brings together papers primarily devoted to the
ways in which the space is understood and recorded in image and
word, based on the direct observation of the monuments and their
surroundings. Representing the Past,collects works in which the
emphasis is placed on depictions of Diocletian’s Palace as sources
for scholarship. From today’s perspective, they are an important
document concerning the state of the monument of that time.
Here there is also a contribution about the only extant specimen
of the Livorno edition of Adam’s Diocletian’s Palace. The group
linked by the subtitle Diocletian’s Palace and the Adam Style
presents works in which there is discussion of the direct influence
of Diocletian’s Palace on the work of Robert Adam, while Lessons
of Diocletian’s Palace focuses on the later influences of the works
of Adam, Clérisseau and Cassas about the Palace on neo-classicist
architecture and culture, as well as on later periods and on the
conservation of the Palace itself.
The lessons Robert Adam grasped in Split also inspired his own architectural projects in England and Scotland influencing in part the „Adam Style“, a specific neoclassical style that had a significant impact on European and American architecture. We find the imprint of Diocletian's Palace as ana architectural and urban design model everywhere in Adam's projects, from the scale of the ornamentation (a famous example is his interpretation of the capital from Diocletian's Peristyle) to the application of the specificities of its spatial constructution.
In 2014, a group of scholars gathered in Split to mark the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam's book, and a series of essays developed out of their discussions. Their texts are illustrated with more than two hundered images, some of which are being published for the first time, from numerous archives and museums, from Sir John Soane's Museum in London to the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
This book shows that the ancient stratum of Diocletian's Palace, this extraordinary multi-layered urban fabris, has not changed notably since Adam's visit to Split. Yet the book is more than just the story of Adam and Diocletian's Palace; it is also a guide to the Palace's spaces and monuments, and a witness to its changes and its continuity. All of these we would not have been able to understand, nor experience so well, without Adam's tireless research.