The Shores of the Adriatic / The Austrian Side, The Küstenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia

by F. Hamilton Jackson

PLAN OF FOUNDATIONS DISCOVERED ON THE RIVA NUOVA, ZARA

S. Domenico (which no longer exists) was of somewhat the same character; but the choir was without dividing walls, and thus became an upper church. It was only 21 ft. square and had three columns on each side, the last close to the wall. The vaults were domically quadripartite, springing from pilasters which rested on the caps. The arcade was round-arched, the central and right-hand apses were square-ended, and the left had a semicircular niche. The under church was wagon-vaulted without architectural features. The foundation of a chapel was found on the Riva Nuova with five niches of a six-niched circle and an entrance passage in the sixth, which turned at right angles to the north to reach the street. In the angle thus formed between the entrance and the main building a sarcophagus stood. This circular-niched plan occurs elsewhere in Dalmatia, as in the baptistery here, and SS. Trinita at Spalato, and the dimensions are generally so nearly the same as to suggest some common original design. S. Pietro Vecchio is considered to be the oldest church in Zara. It is now desecrated, but was used as a sacristy to the fourteenth-century church of S. Andrea, belonging to the Fishers' Confraternity, the sixteenth-century apse of which projected into the nave as far as the first pillar. It was cleared out by order of the Central Commission in 1886. It is about 38 ft. long by 19 ft. broad, and is built of ancient fragments with very little architectural character. One of the two columns bears a Roman inscription, and both have crosses cut in them. One of the caps is a damaged antique; the other is an antique base upside down; neither column has any base. The church is an irregular rectangle in plan, divided into two naves which end in apses by two pillars and a pier. The pilasters are not upright, the arches are deformed, and the two altar niches have half-cupola vaults on a rectangular plan, with arches thrown across the corners. There are two original doors, both built up. The pier between the two apses has a round-arched niche in it. The church is mentioned in 918 in the will of Prior Andrea.

There was a cathedral here in very early times, referred to in a will of 908 as S. Anastasia. It was originally S. Pietro, and the dedication was changed when the relics of S. Anastasia which S. Donato brought from Constantinople and placed in the church of the Holy Trinity were transferred to the cathedral. This church was destroyed by the Venetians in 1202, but probably portions of it were worked up in the new building which the Crusaders are said to have erected as a votive church after the pope had excommunicated them all for the sack of Zara. This seems, however, a legend, since the new building was not consecrated till May 27, 1285, the Archbishop Lorenzo Periandro officiating, assisted by the Metropolitan of Spalato and the suffragan bishops of both dioceses. On the vault of the ciborium and on the jamb of the main door are inscriptions, dated respectively 1332 and 1324, recording their erection by "Joannis de Bvtvane, archiep: Jadren." Certain portions show by their style that additions and alterations were made, still later. The length is 170 ft. and the width 65 ft.

NORTH DOOR OF WESTERN FAÇADE, CATHEDRAL, ZARA

The façade has three doors, and is divided by pilaster strips which emphasise the width of the nave; at either side of the central door is a shallow recess filling the space between it and the pilaster strips. The door itself has spiral and simple colonnettes in the jambs, with corresponding arch moulds of four orders. In the tympanum is a later relief of the Virgin and Child enthroned, with two saints, beneath a pointed trefoil arcade; and on brackets at the sides are four figures of Apostles. On the side doors the tympana have the Agnus Dei, and that to the left has the Annunciation on brackets, one figure on each side of the door. The colonnettes and arch moulds are both twisted in this door; in that to the right they are plain; the figures on brackets are similar. The lintels and jambs have elaborate arabesque scrolls, which remind one of Provençal Romanesque ornament. The lower part of the wall has courses of pinkish marble among the white, and bands of inlaid ornament decorate both the wall and the campanile. Above the string course over the doorways is a Romanesque-looking arcade with another which fills the slope of the aisle walls, with animals standing at the ends. The central portion has a restored wheel-window with radiating colonnettes and round arches, and above it in the gable is another with cusped tracery of a later date; round this an arcading ramps as at the end of the aisles, and the lower rose is flanked by arcading in two stages arched only in the upper one. Both of these arcadings have coupled colonnettes, and are manifestly much later than the lower part of the façade. The walls of the north aisle have an arcading separated into groups by pilasters, echoing the internal divisions, with a gallery above, like S. Nicola, Bari, and others of the Apulian churches. A cornice of corbelled arches crowns the nave wall. The campanile was commenced in 1449 by Archbishop Lorenzo Venier, and carried up by Archbishop Matteo Valaresso in 1460 to the height from which Mr. T.G. Jackson completed it. It has five stories and an octagonal pyramidal termination. The three upper stories have two window openings in each, the lowest being single lights, while the upper two have a central colonnette and two stilted round arches beneath a containing arch. A string with corbelled arches below divides the stories, and the square portion terminates with a balustrade in the usual manner.

The inside was altered in the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The nave arcade, which continues to the apse, consists of ten round arches on each side resting alternately on columns and piers with columns attached which have cushion caps. Some of the columns are spirally fluted and have decadent antique caps. Some are cipollino, and two are apparently cut from antique columns, one having four shafts attached to the central cylindrical mass, and the corresponding one on the other side being panelled, with octagonal colonnettes attached. The pier at the choir steps has two small columns instead of one. Two bays of the aisles equal one bay of the nave, and pilasters run up from the piers, dividing the triforium arches into groups of six, on the tops of which figures stand. The triforium arcade has round arches with coupled colonnettes of red marble on the face and varied caps; the voussoirs are alternately red and grey; and a string with carved leaf pattern, much like that at Traù, runs along the triforium, between the nave arcade and the balustrade. The nave arcade terminates at each end with a single arch. The apse has a marble seat running round it, with the bishop's seat in the centre raised on several steps. It has exactly the same ornament on its sides as is on the font in the baptistery. The wall is sheeted with red marble. The ciborium has pointed arches resting upon Corinthianising caps and columns of cipollino carved in coffered patterns or spiral and zigzag channelling; a cornice of acanthus-leaves runs above the arches. It was erected by Archbishop Butuane, consecrated in 1332, and restored in 1901-1902. The presbytery pavement is of 1336. The stalls, once painted and gilt, are very fine examples of Venetian-Gothic wood carving, and were partly made for Archbishop Biagio Molin in 1420-1427, whose arms are carved on them; but those of his predecessor and successor, and those of Valaresso, under whom the work was probably completed, also appear. Between the stalls, elaborately pierced and carved scroll-work runs up to the canopy level, where little figures stand in niches. Above the canopies, which are slightly pointed fluted shells, and separated from them by curious ogee-shaped gables, are thirty-six half-length figures of prophets, emergent from scrolls and holding labels. Above one of the side altars are six small Carpaccios on panel much repainted—the one with the figure of S. Martin bears his signature; also a Palma Giovine and an Andrea Schiavone.

PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL, ZARA

Beneath the step of the high-altar is the sarcophagus of Oriental marble, with porphyry cover, of the three saints, Agape, Chionia, and Irene, whose remains are interred in the crypt. The crypt is entered by two flights of stairs from the sides of the choir. It is of an irregular shape, about 70 ft. long, 23 ft. broad, and 15 ft. high. Eastwards it suddenly broadens out to a width of 33 ft. and terminates in a semicircle. In this apse there are three windows. Two rows of nine columns extend to just above the point where the change in width begins, and four more follow the external curve of the wall. These support quadripartite vaulting. The columns have heavy square caps and square bases. In one is a grated aperture as if for relics. The sarcophagus altar has a much worn representation of the Martyrdom of Sant' Anastasia, with her name inscribed in Lombardic letters between two foliage scrolls. Fragments of early work are visible here and there, pointing to the reconstruction of the crypt. It is very dark, and is now used as a store, having become too damp for ritual purposes.