Strossmayer's Old Masters Gallery is situated at the Croatian Academy of Science and Art palace, established 1861. The building of the palace in the Italian Renaissance style, after the design by the Viennese architect Friedrich Schmidt (1825-1891), was completed in 1880, while the Gallery was solemnly opened for public for the first time on 9 November, 1884.

The founder of the Gallery after whom it was named, as well as its largest donor, was Josip Juraj Strossmayer, bishop of Bosnia, Dakovo, and Syrmia (1815-1905).

His donation included 284 works of art, mostly by Italian Renaissance, mannerism and baroque painting schools, all the way to the late Venetian settecento. It furtherly included a number of works by Austrian, German, Dutch, Flemish and French artists. These works of art, with predominantly religious and biblical motifs, constitute the Gallery's main holdings. J.J. Strossmayer was expanding the Gallery through donations until the very end of his life. Apart from him, many other donors (Ivan Ruzic, marquis Etienne de Piennes, Zlatko Balokovic, Ante Topic Mimara, and many others) were also donating to the Gallery individual pieces, as well as entire collections, so that the entire holdings went up from the initial 284 pieces to as much as 714, while, including individual collections (Csikos, Sebalj, Svecnjak, Sulentic, Auer, Uzorinac), it makes over 4,000 exhibits (paintings, sculptures, drawings, graphic sheets and applied art objects). The collection on permanent display includes 256 works, while the rest is stored at the Gallery's storage, as well as in over a dozen other museum & gallery institutions in Croatia. The Strossmayer Gallery's rich storage is classified per schools and collections, thus facilitating research.

Apart from the Gallery situated on the second floor, the palace holds in its atrium an extremely important monument, The Baska Stone Tablet, one among the oldest Croatian language monuments written i.e. carved in stone.

Strossmayer Gallery storeroom

JOSIP JURAJ STROSSMAYER
(Osijek, 4/2/1815 - Dakovo, 8/4/1904), bishop, politician, and art collector, was a broadly educated intellectual who appeared on the scene during The Croatian National Revival (1835-1848) and national awareness raising period. After majoring in theology from the Dakovo Roman-Catholic seminary and winning a philosophical sciences doctor's degree in Budapest in 1834, he was, in 1850, appointed the bishop of Bosnia and Syrmia. The inauguration ceremony took place in Dakovo, the diocese seat, on 29 September, 1850. Through his ideas, efforts and financial support, he influenced cultural life development in Croatia, encouraged Zagreb University restoration (1874) and the founding of the former Yugoslav Academy of Science and Art (today's Croatian Academy of Science and Art). He also takes credit for the building of the neo-Romanesque cathedral in Dakovo (1866-1870). The works of art that he was collecting in his diocese, as well as outside the country, mostly in Italy, were donated by him in 1868 to the then Yugoslav Academy. It was in the Academy palace that the Gallery named Strossmayer's Old Masters Gallery was opened in 1884.

The Baska Stone Tablet
0,99 x 2,00 x 0,09 m

The Baska Stone Tablet one among the oldest Croatian language monuments, was named after the place called Baska on the Island of Krk, where it was discovered in a former Benedictine St. Lucy's church near the village of Jurandvor. It was written in a transitional alphabet from rounded to square Glagolitic script. The contents of the inscription indicate that the Croatian King Zvonimir (-1089) donated to a Benedictine abbot the land on which St. Lucy's church was later built. The Tablet was originally a part of the altar partition and as such polychrome. Along the Tablet's upper edge runs an ornamented belt with a plant motif of tendrils and leaves, while the remaining space is filled with a Glagolitic inscription, while there is an empty 10 cm margin on the left side. It dates back to around 1100.

copyright MDC

Design: NOVENA, Zagreb