CROMART

Welcome to the website of the project Croatian medieval heritage in European context: mobility of artists and transfer of forms, functions and ideas (CROMART), funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (Hrvatska zaklada za znanost)

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Project duration: 15 June 2014 – 15 June 2018

The project puts Croatia in the focus of European research of the middle ages. The international team will implement already elaborated methodologies combined with new technologies (geo-radar, remote sensing) on the medieval artistic heritage of Croatia as to track and map the changes that occurred in monumental landscape in the time span from late antiquity to the late middle ages. Croatia was a border zone between super-powers: eastern and western Roman Empire; Byzantium and respectively Lombard, Carolingian, Ottonian rule; from the 11th c. on, the powers of the West change: the Papacy and Venice, then Hungary. The ecclesiastical and social elites as protagonists of political and diplomatic activities have always strengthened their power by investing and sponsoring architecture and works of art. Those investors often commissioned works of art in their respective countries or summoned architects, sculptors and painters.

The main goal of this project is to track down those artists who came from abroad as well as those going out from Croatia and to analyse the origins of the forms and functions of architecture built from late antiquity to the late middle ages.

The understanding of the transformation of the Roman world in late antiquity and the early middle Ages, the need to track those changes in a longer time span, even within the growth of the medieval feudal society and to explain the role of the elites becomes fundamental.

To answer those questions large field surveys will be carried on as well as the research of elites as investors and carriers of ideas, forms and functions of ecclesiastical architecture. The team is divided in working groups covering different historical regions of Croatia, submitted to very different influences during the middle ages, as well as covering different chronological sequences. By means of thorough field survey, creating catalogue data of architecture, sculpture and painting, through comparative analysis the goal will be achieved.

• Presentation of the CROMART project, Zagreb, February 27^th 2015
• Presentation of the CROMART project, Poreč, May 23^rd 2015
• Presentation of the CROMART project, Perpignan, France, June 2015