Biogradska predromanička skulptura

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This paper analyses the extant pre-Romanesque sculpture from Biograd, classifying it into homogeneous groups based on stylistic and visualmorphological features, and attributing it to various stone-carving workshops active from the last decades of the 8th until the late 9th century. Most of the fragments have been associated with the recently identified atelier called “Workshop of the Plutei of the Zadar Cathedral” and dated approximately to the last decades of the 8th or the very beginning of the 9th century. Some of the remaining fragments have been linked to the stone-carving workshops active in the times of the Croatian dukes Trpimir and Branimir, and thus dated to the middle and the last quarter of the 9th century, respectively. As for the rest of the reliefs, it has only been possible to establish that they show features of mature pre-Romanesque style typical of the 9th century, with three interesting fragments dated to a somewhat later period based on their stylistic features: two of them to the mid-11th and the third to the first quarter of the 12th century. Finally, an analysis and attribution of three fragments of two pilasters that were later re-carved as an architrave, discovered in St Chrysogonus’ church in Zadar, has helped the author to establish a chronological distinction between two early stone-carving productions identified in the broader Zadar region. One of them is the “Workshop of the Plutei of the Zadar Cathedral”, which helps in dating the largest group of pre-Romanesque reliefs from Biograd with greater accuracy.