The Sculpture of Rudina Abbey in a European Context Europe, Croatia, Romanesque art

Abstract

The Benedictine Abbey of St. Michael in Rudine near Požega is an archaeological site known for more than a hundred years. The first explorations were done in 1906 and 1907 and ever since then Rudina has been explored in a stop and start manner. The archaeological site consists of two basic units: the monastery with a three-aisle, three- apse church, a cloister with the accompanying monastic buildings, and a small aisleless church with a rounded apse some fifty metres to the West. A considerable body of architectural sculpture has been found at the site, but the most important finding is a series of twenty heads, of which nineteen are brackets. This figural sculpture is mainly described in the literature as rustic work without a solid link to sculpture in the immediate area. In spite of all this, the Rudina sculptures are an extremely important cultural phenomenon as the largest group of Romanesque sculptures in Continental Croatia on record. Still, this sculpture has not been studied as completely as it deserves to be. This paper mentions the possibility that the figural stone sculpture of the Benedictine monastery in Rudina was made by a local workshop, it also raises the question of possible influence on that sculpture within the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, but indirectly also in Western Europe. Special emphasis is placed on the possible ways (or media) that these influences could have been adopted and on the potential connection to Western Europe and the Pannonian basin.