Ante Topić Mimara

Ante Topić Mimara (April 7, 1898 - January 30, 1987) was a Croatian art collector and benefactor. He donated his collection of more than 3,700 works of art from prehistory to the 20th century to the Croatian people. The collection is now housed in the Mimara Museum in Zagreb.

Mimara was born in Korušica, a small village in Dalmatia. When World War I broke out, he fought as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army. When the war ended, he went to Rome. In 1921, Mimara bought his first artistic object: an Alexandrian glass chalice with the image of the Good Shepherd, made in the "fondo d'oro" technique. It is still part of his collection.

In Rome he studied painting and art restoration. Mimara would later use that knowledge to restore numerous works of art he collected. He spent World War II in Paris and Berlin, trying to safeguard his collection, which was already large and valuable. Antwerp and Morocco were just some of the stops for his growing collection, which acquired works by Raphael, Velázquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Renoir, as well as objects from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Chinese art and thousands of other items.

In post-war years, Mimara was a consultant to the Yugoslavian military mission in Berlin and Munich, where he worked on returning the plundered works of art to Yugoslavia. In the early 1960s, he settled in Salzburg, also spending much time in his apartment in the Upper Town of Zagreb. He sold the Cloisters Cross to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is vividly described by Thomas Hoving, who made the acquisition, in his book on the work.

Mimara made his first donation in 1948, when he donated a hundred works of art to the Strossmayer Gallery in Zagreb. But his greatest donation came in 1973. He made a special gift certificate, donating his entire collection of more than 3,700 works of art from prehistory to the 20th century to the Croatian people. He wanted a museum which, in his words, "would be peerless between Vienna and Istanbul". Mimara died in Salzburg in 1987, six months before the grand opening of his collection in the splendid former Gymnasium building in Zagreb.