FAMOUS CROATS - Anđela Horvat

Art historian and conservator (Krašić, 18 March 1911 – Zagreb, 26 September 1985). Graduated with a degree in Art History, History and Latin at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (1935), where she also defended her doctoral thesis entitled Architectural and Fine Arts Monuments in Međimurje (1956). She spent her working years at the Croatian Conservation Institute in Zagreb (1941-1970). She was a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Art (since 1983). Apart from working on the creative conservation of monuments, Anđela Horvat was a renowned scientist whose research interests covered a broad spectrum of topics. Temporally, her work was dedicated to works of art originating between the 7th and 20th centuries. Thematically, her research interests spanned all branches of art: from urbanism and architecture, sculpture and painting, to artisan crafts. Territorially, her work was focused on continental Croatia. Considering the context in which she did her research, drawing attention to continental Croatia meant dedicating research to an area that had been almost entirely unexplored, left in the shadow of the great Dalmatian works of art. In this territorially limited yet thematically broad field of research, Anđela Horvat introduced a series of significant shifts in Croatian art history. Most importantly, she listed, covered and photographed an incredible number of objects, which remain recorded in her famous travel notebooks (Vade mecum). In addition to these topographical contributions, Anđela Horvat interpreted many significant units, which had previously been left almost completely unaddressed, such as medieval burgs, baroque sacral architecture, Gothic sculpture, etc. She was also responsible for a number of new attributions, primarily for the attribution of certain elements in both the cathedral and St Mark's church in Zagreb to a stonemasonry workshop run by the Parler family in late medieval times. Marked by a positivist approach to the subject matter, her analysis of the parallel employment of different styles in the Renaissance era, published in the iconic book Between the Gothic and Baroque (1975), which remains as topical as upon first publication, made a significant theoretical contribution. Anđela Horvat also authored the first comprehensive overview of baroque works of art in continental Croatia (published in the book Baroque in Croatia, 1982). Anđela Horvat's opus, collected in over a hundred research articles, chapters, collections and books, was and remains the starting point of nearly every single piece of research focused on works of art in continental Croatia. Katarina Horvat-Levaj, PhD Director of the Institute of Art History