Baldassare D’Anna – nove slike s hrvatskih otoka

Abstract

The Venetian painter Baldassare DʼAnna (Venice, 1572–1646) is represented by numerous paintings in Istria and Dalmatia. His oeuvre, relatively well researched, has been interpreted as comprising eclectic works that reveal direct and consistent influences of his contemporaries and predecessors along the lines of Titian and Jacopo Palma the Younger. This obvious influence resulted in conventional altarpieces and sacral paintings following Renaissance compositional patterns of symmetry and a clear layout, with firmly shaped figures repeating certain bodily features and physiognomy. To this corpus of the painter’s works in Croatia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina), the author has added some hitherto unattributed works on the islands of Brač, Šolta, Lošinj, and Krk. While these additions do not bring novelties in the artistic sense, they emphasize the role, significance, and popularity of D’Anna’s belated Renaissance art among Dalmatian commissioners. The still insufficiently researched role of D’Anna’s workshop collaborators has also been highlighted, given visible oscillations in the artistic value of his paintings.