FAMOUS CROATS 2003 - 250TH DEATH ANNIVERSARY OF FEDERIKO BENKOVIĆ

The stamps have been issued in a 20-stamp sheet, and the First Day Cover (FDC) was also issued. FEDERIKO BENKOVIĆ, definitely the greatest Baroque painter of Croatian origin, was born in 1667. Unfortunately, so far it has been impossible to determine the exact birthplace (Omiš, Šibenik, the island Brač, or possibly Verona or Venice). But it is an uncontestable fact that Federiko Benković came from an old Croatian family, from the islands Brač or Hvar, named Bankovich, pseudonym Baloi, and that he was educated in Italy, to be more exact, in Venice and Bologna. Benković is one in the line of great Slav people, referred to as Schiavone in Italy, like Čulinović, the brothers Francesco and Lorenzo Laurana-Vranjanin, Julije Klović, all of them artists of Croatian origin who have woven their creative genius both into the Croatian and Italian cultural heritage, which also means the world cultural heritage. In Bologna Benković studied with the eminent Baroque painter Carlo Cignani, helping him in 1706 to paint St.Mary’s Assumption on the dome of the Forli cathedral. Before that, in 1705, Juno on the clouds, his earliest and best-known painting was painted. In the course of his stay in Bologna, he also worked in the workshop of Giuseppe Maria Crespi, which also left significant traces in his painter’s expression. In 1710 Benković painted the altarpiece with the images of St.Andrew on the cross surrounded by St.Bartholomew, St.Carolus Borromei, St.Lucia and St. Apollonia for the church of Madonna del Piombo in Bologna, later transferred to the parish church Senonches near Chartres in France. This painting, like some others which disappeared till the year 1715, later to have got lost, played a key role in the creation of the painter’s reputation, as he was one of the key figures of Venetian painting of that time. He also had a significant influence on the forming of the young Giambatista Tiepolo. In the course of the year 1715, Benković painted four large canvases, his key works, painted to the order of Prince Lothar Franz Schönborn for his gallery in the castle of Pommersfeldern: Apollo and Marcia, Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, Iphigenia’s sacrifice and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. These works are exceptional even within the figurative culture of that time, as one of the greatest authorities and connoisseurs of the Baroque Venetian painting, Rodolfo Palluchini, had written. The picture Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, nowadays kept in the Strossmayer gallery, is probably the painting that disappeared from the castle of Pommersfeldern at the beginning of the 19th century. Until that time, the painting was attributed to Piazzeti. “The Association of friends of Strossmayer’s gallery” bought the painting at a London auction in 1936. After his death, Benković himself and his work gradually fell into oblivion. His paintings used to be attributed to G.B.Piazzeta, Cignani, etc. and it was only at the beginning of the 20th century that his work began to be studied carefully and the importance of his role in the painting of the Late Baroque in Venice, south Germany and Austria was recognized. Miroslav Gašparović