A Ninth-century Stone-cutting Workshop in Southern Dalmatia

Over the last fifty years, significant progress has been made in research of pre-Romanesque sculpture on the eastern Adriatic coast, especially in central Dalmatia and Istria. Relief carvings from southern Dalmatia had not received the same amount of attention until a serious earthquake occurred in 1979 which caused considerable damage to numerous religious buildings in the neighbouring cities of Dubrovnik (Croatia) and Kotor (Montenegro), necessitating repair works during which numerous new relief carvings were discovered. The author of the paper draws attention to the characteristic motifs, the manner of carving, and the epigraphic features which the inscriptions of these relief carvings share. The new finds contribute to a fuller survey of this unique carving school, which was connected by the same author more than ten years ago to a separate stone-cutting workshop, marked by a relatively high quality of workmanship, which operated in southern Dalmatia. The facts evident in the inscriptions on the ciboria from this workshop considerably support the more precise dating of all these relief carvings to the opening decades of the ninth century. The author dedicates special attention to the term propitiatorum, which features in the inscription on one of the ciboria, and interprets its appearance as a direct echo of the Carolingian renaissance.