Art historical topography of the ancient Salona

Torlak, Ana. (2015). Art historical topography of the ancient Salona. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Art History. [mentor Jeličić-Radonić, Jasna].

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Abstract

Architectural and art historical heritage of Salona, the capital city of the Roman province of Dalmatia, is enormous in scope. In order to understand art objects in an ancient city, it is necessary to determine its historic and geographic context, i.e. the art historical topography of the city. The historic sources in that endeavour are historical-literary writings, epigraphic monuments and other archaeological objects as well as drawings and cartographic materials. All of these bear witness to the times in which they were made. For purposes of researching and mapping out the topography of the capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia it was necessary to concentrate on the following time frame: from the consolidation of the Roman rule in the area (end of the 2nd century BC) to the Roman Emperor Diocletian's reign (3rd century AD). As the Classical period came to its end and as the tribes of Germans, Slavs and Avars swept the area, Salona was abandoned, and many of its monuments and art objects destroyed. The former metropolis turned to ruins while the memory of it was kept in literary writings. These sources and archive documents were analysed, and excerpts mentioning Salona ruins and its art heritage are presented here with the valuable data they yield. In addition, the analysis of these sources also yields other valuable information: changes in the attitude towards the art historical heritage are tracked through different historical eras. Since the sources analysed in this work are very diverse, they are categorised by theme and genre and each group is inspected in isolation. The sources comprise: official documents, art objects in private collections, foreign writers' travelogues written by the end of the 19th century, cartographic depictions of Salona, and writings about the displaced Salona art. A considerable part of Salona art ended up in private collections. Because theownership of these collections changed repeatedly through the centuries, the complete corpus of these collections is unknown today. However, it has been partially reconstructed thanks to the analysis of the mentioned sources (in this work). With the beginning of the 19th century, the attitude towards the cultural heritage, especially that of the Classical period, changed. First formal research ensued with the establishment of the Split Archaeological Museum. At that time, the preservation of the monuments was organized and efforts were made to stop the further scattering and destroying of the Salona heritage. The ground was set for expert archaeological research of Salona, which intermittently continues to this day. In a nutshell, the art historical topography of the ancient city of Salona is mapped out by first synthesizing the collected archival documents on the lost art and analysing the scattered private collections. These results were then considered in relation to the data on specific archaeological locales, which are grouped by the historical period and terrain monument complexes they pertain to.

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