MONUMENTALNA FONTANA NA SPLITSKOJ RIVI. IKONOGRAFSKA PITANJA
THE MONUMENTAL FOUNTAIN ON THE WATERFRONT OF SPLIT – MATTERS OF ICONOGRAPHY

Summary/Abstract: The authors of this paper address the iconographic program of the former Monumental Fountain, which in 1947 was removed from the Split waterfront. The Fountain was erected while Antonio Bajamonti, a proponent of the Autonomous Party, was mayor, and it was put into operation in 1888. This paper is the first to bring forth a Croatian translation of a propaganda leaflet from 1880 which contains a description of Bajamonti’s iconographic program for the fountain. The translated leaflet serves to supplement the existing research on the artistic and ideological ideas which this renowned mayor of Split and a proponent of the autonomous political faction wanted to achieve through the fountain, erected at his initiative. The article brings forth a detailed analysis of Ceccon’s sculpture of a young man, a putto (a figure resembling an angel), dolphins, nereids, sirens/nymphs, and tritones. The paper points out Bajamonti’s complex iconographic program, never before analyzed in the relevant literature, and consequently never valorized either. This complex iconographic program reveals the humanistic educational concept of the time, as well as the humanistic worldview of the initiator of the Fountain’s construction, his respect for education and his aspirations for the revitalization of Split in the moral, economic, intellectual, and aesthetic senses.

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