- Giovanni Dalmata
Giovanni Duknovich (c. 1440 – c. 1514), called Giovanni Dalmata (also known as "Giovanni di Traù" and "Ioannes Stephani Duknovich de Tragurio", and in
Croatia known as "Ivan Duknović") was a sculptor fromDalmatia who was mainly active inRome ,Hungary and inDalmatia . Giovanni Dalmata was, withMino da Fiesole andAndrea Bregno , the leading sculptor in Rome in the second half of the15th century .He was born in
Vinišće , a Dalmatian village near Traù (Trogir ) in Croatia around 1440 and came to Rome between 1460 and 1465 to work forPope Paul II on thePalazzo di Venezia . Other works in and around Rome include: the "Tempietto S. Giacomo" inVicovaro (near Tivoli), the tomb monuments of Pope Paul II in St. Peter's (now dismantled), the tomb of Cardinal Bartolomeo della Rovere in San Clemente, the tomb of Cardinal Bernardo Eroli (now Grotte Vaticane).Around 1488–1490, Duknovich went to the Court of King
Matthias Corvinus inBuda , where he stayed for a few years, mastering a number of works which are unfortunately all either completely destroyed or badly damaged (e.g. the Fountain of Hercules inVisegrád ).After his stay in Hungary, Giovanni Duknovich returned to Traù where he left a number of works, most important among those is the
statue of St. John the Evangelist in the "Orsini chapel" in Trogir Cathedral. Duknović is also the creator of the sculpture of St. Magdalene in the Franciscan monastery of St. Anthony on the nearbyČiovo island and worked withNicolò Fiorentino andAndrea Alessi on the renaissance palaceCippico in Traù.Around 1503, he was in Rome again, working on the
tomb of the Papal Protonotary Lomellino. In 1509 he executed the tomb of the Beato Giannelli for S. Ciriaco inAncona . Some documents of 1513 and 1514 mention a "Magistro Joanni lapicida" in Traù where he presumably died soon afterwards.Recently the newly discovered Duknoviuch's work (The Virgin and Child, marble relief) was offered on auction in London's [http://www.katz.co.uk/ Katz gallery] and bought for £250,000 by Trogir City Museum, which now owns six masterpieces.
References
* Johannes Röll, Giovanni Dalmata, 1994.
* The dictionary of art, [http://www.groveart.com/ www.groveart.com] , entry by Kruno Prijatelj
* http://www.arcipelagoadriatico.it/pdf/saggi&contributi_Dalmazia_StoriaDalmazia_Toth3.pdf
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