Split - The Meštrović Gallery and the Kaštelet

A couple of minutes further along Setalište Ivana Meštrovića at no. 39, the Ivan Meštrović Gallery (Galerija Ivana Meštrovića; Tues-Sun 1 am-6pm) is housed in the ostentatious Neoclassical building that the country's most famous modern sculptor planned as his home and studio. Fronted by a portentous veranda supported by Ionic columns, the house was completed in 1939 - Meštrović lived in it for just two years before fleeing to Zagreb to escape the Italian occupation in 1941.
Even if you're not mad about Meštrović, this is still an impressive collection, although the emphasis is on smooth female nudes and tender Madonnas rather than the ideological and historical subjects with which he made his reputation. Some of the religious pieces (look out for a particularly tortured Job from 1946) have considerable emotional depth, although his other work can sometimes appear facile - such as the slightly daft Joyful Youth or the giant and ungainly Adam and Eve. Portraits of members of his immediate family in the ground-floor drawing room are refreshingly direct, especially the honest and sensitive My Mother from 1909.
Meštrovićs best work can be seen in the so-called Kaitelet ("little castle"; in theory Tues-Sun 10am-5pm, but check at the Meštrović Gallery first; admission with gallery ticket) about 200m further up the road. Built in the sixteenth century as the fortified residence of the Capogrosso family, but long used for other purposes (it was at various times a tannery and a hospital), the Kastelet was virtually a ruin when Meštrović bought it in 1939 to house his Life of Christ cycle, a series of reliefs in wood that he'd been working on since 1916. Presided over by a mannered but moving Crucftixion, the cycle spreads like a frieze across all four walls of the church, borrowing stylistically from Assyrian bas-reliefs, Egyptian tomb paintings and Archaic Greek art. The result is an immensely powerful piece of religious sculpture, with rows of rigidly posed, hypnotically stylized figures in which the sum of Megtrovi6s eclecticism is for once greater than its parts. It's said that Meštrovic began the cycle in response to the horrors of World War I, which may go some way to explaining its spiritual punch.

ja_mageia

Dubrovnik

Places Around

Islands

Croatia