June 27th, Split Museums

6/27     Thursday

            Today we grab a bus to Split from our local bus stop just a few blocks from our place, for a little touristing.

The Gallery of Fine Art has a nice collection in a building that used to be a hospital. It’s now a series of galleries arranged around an open courtyard. The collection begins with some very interesting 13^th Century religious art, then offers a sampling of Croatian artists to the present day. It’s interesting work that’s not widely available. The paintings seem to us to be dark and somber, perhaps reflecting the difficult history of the region.

After the art, we visit the Croatian Maritime Museum. This is a fairly simple museum, considering the intense relationship of the Croats with the sea. It has some artifacts and model ships, and one wing devoted to military paraphernalia. Still, it’s pretty interesting overall.

We return to the harborside plaza for a snack. We enjoy an octopus salad at a chic café with a sea breeze. We nearly head for home, but the summer home of Ivan Meštrović is close by, so we’re determined to make a visit. Our walk there takes us past the yacht marina, always a fun site. There’s some kind of sailing event going on, because the waters are filled with the sails of small Lasers. A little further on, we pass the large state park that borders the city. Then we arrive at the gallery.  The Ivan Meštrović gallery was designed by the sculptor as a summer home, studio and exhibition center. It has a gorgeous site on a rise overlooking the sea, and today the view through the junipers shows the sea full of the Laser sails in the distance. It seems that we can see hundreds of sails dancing over the waves like feathers on pointe. The works in the gardens and house are fantastic. They are not organized chronologically, and what is interesting is that there’s no apparent learning curve, the work is all mature, the aesthetic vision is unified throughout, there’s no “early work.” It’s all gorgeous. There are large and small pieces, marble, bronze and wood. The female figures are beautifully soft, the marble is as smooth as butter. The male figures are aggressively virile. Many are of religious themes, a pieta, Job, Madonna and child.
A little further down the street is a private chapel, also on a spectacular property at the cliffs over the sea. Here is a courtyard leading to a simple stone chapel, decorated with wooden panels carved in bas relief, depicting scenes from the life of Christ. It manages to be understated and complex at the same time. The gestures and expressions are wonderful.

2 Videos Included

 Split Museums Part 1

Split Museums Part 2