The Interpretation Centre of the Cathedral of St James

The lecture by Prof. Dr. Sc. Predrag Marković “Stone, Fire and Iron – St. James’ Cathedral Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow” will be held on Tuesday, May 27th at 8:00 p.m. in the Center’s hall. The lecturer and the topic will be introduced by Jolanda Krnić Zmijanović, a member of the “Juraj Dalmatinac” Society, which is the organizer of the lecture.

About the lecture
The long stone slabs that, harmoniously arranged and interconnected, form the rounded stone vaults and slender dome of the Cathedral of St. James are certainly its most important architectural value, but also its most valuable architectural value in terms of style. It is an exceptional and unique engineering achievement, precisely the one that, above all its other values, earned it a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000. However, its materially and formally unique appearance of geometrically purified and harmoniously composed bare vaults-roofs is also its most enigmatic part. This thin and technologically very complex and demanding single (roof) of the cathedral, which, as a 2-in-1 system, rejected the usual two-layer construction with a wooden roof and an upper “protective membrane” of tiles or lead sheets, still hides the real reasons for its appearance. Surprisingly, in the professional literature to date there are few scientifically based and rationally argued attempts to find a convincing interpretation of the origin and meaning of such a risky, essentially experimental, but let’s not forget also very expensive solution. Let’s not forget, after the walls were erected during four decades of construction (1431-1473), the construction of the “roof” itself and the completion of the cathedral took another six decades, until 1536. The lecture will attempt to clarify the specific circumstances that, in a combination of specific historical and stylistic circumstances at the beginning of the third quarter of the 15th century, led the people of Šibenik to finally agree to finance such a daring, practically untested and untried idea, the ones that would postpone the much-desired completion of the construction of a cathedral with recognizable Renaissance features for generations to come.

About the lecturer
Prof. Dr. Sc. Predrag Marković is employed at the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, where he teaches topics in general and national medieval and early Renaissance art. He was the head of the Postgraduate Doctoral Study of Art History on two occasions, and is currently the head of the Department of Romanesque and Gothic Art. During his career so far, he has led the scientific project “Representative Sacral Architecture of Adriatic Croatia from the 13th to the 16th century” (2007-2013), and has been a collaborator on several scientific projects that researched the medieval and early modern heritage of Croatia and neighboring countries. He received a plaque from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for participation in the exhibition project La Renaissance en Croatie (2004), and for the book “Katedrala st. Jakov u Šibenik Prvih 105. godina” DPUH (2010). He received the annual award of the Society of Art Historians of Croatia and the State Award for Science. His special areas of interest are architecture and sculpture of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Croatia (13th-16th centuries). He has been intensively involved in the study of the Cathedral of St. James in Šibenik and the Adriatic sacral architecture of the 15th century for the last quarter of a century, during which he has published numerous works related to the most significant monuments and artistic figures of that era.