Srebrna oltarna pala u Kotoru

Abstract

The article analyses a silver altarpiece in Kotor Cathedral which was made in the repoussé technique in the mid-fifteenth century. The figure of St. Tryphon (fig. 11) is the only saint which had been preserved from an earlier, fourteenth century altarpiece. Two figures (Christ and St. Peter; fig. 2, 3) were made by master John of Basel, active in Kotor until 1440 when he moved to nearby Dubrovnik where he was commissioned, by the Franciscans, with a silver crucifix, still preserved. The figures of three saints (fig. 6, 8), in the right part of the middle row (fig. 5), distinguish themselves from the others with their visual quality and are the work of a master who trained in a more developed artistic centre. A more numerous group of figures, the author of the article attributes to a local goldsmith called Marin Adamov (fig. 5, 9, 10). His work on the altarpiece is directly testified with a document dated in 1445. Finally, the altar piece was dismantled and re-assembled in the seventeenth century when the Venetian master goldsmithVenturin added the figures (of a mediocre quality) of St. Francis and St. Jerome (fig. 13). The author of the paper proposes a reconstruction of the original appearance of the altarpiece in the mid-fifteenth century. Accordingly,saints’ figures were arranged in two rows, with Christ figure in the centre of the upper row. The lower centre figure was St. Tryphon, flanked by St. Marc the Evangelist and St. Simeon the Righteous whose Kotor feast coincides with that of St. Tryphon.