Notable people from Dalmatia

(in chronological order by date of birth)

245 - 313

After Diocletian had achieved a furious rise to Caesar in Rome, put down a revolt in Egypt, won England and northern France back for Rome and conquered Persia, this son of the city of Solin resolved to build himself a residence for his old age. In only a few years he erected, a few kilometres from his native city, a palace that to this day houses the old town of Split. The builder himself, however, was able to use the complex for only the 8 years that remained to him between his withdrawal from the political stage and his death.

14XX - 1473

While many another artist falls all too easily into oblivion, Dalmatinac raised a monument to himself - or rather, countless monuments. For the sculptor and architect, born in Zadar, not only beautified many a townscape in Dalmatia and Italy with his statues, town houses, churches and defensive works - he also designed the entire town of Pag on the drawing board. Dalmatinac mixed the traditional motifs of the late Gothic with the modern proportions of the then emerging Renaissance and thus created a building style that to this day is admired by connoisseurs and laypeople alike, or at least intuitively found to be harmonious and beautiful.

1487 - 1572

The Renaissance man of letters Hektorović learnt from the very greatest: he studied intensively the art of the ancient poet Ovid, strove for a translation of his works as faithful as possible in both sense and wording, and thus established his own catchy style. It is no surprise, then, that a good many of his poems are known today as folk songs in Croatia and beyond. Hektorović would surely have liked this development, for he himself had a leaning towards folkloric songs: in his work "Fishing and Fishermen's Conversations" he repeatedly weaves fragments of old fishermen's songs and musical quotations into a fictional voyage around the island of Hvar. Hektorović's dwelling house can be visited today in Stari Grad on Hvar.

1588 - 1638

Born the son of a well-off noble family of old Ragusa, Gundulić never found himself in the awkward position of possibly having to work as a fisherman or farmer, and so preferred to devote himself to the art of writing. The patriotic-romantic pastoral drama "Dubravka" and the heroic portrayals of knights in "Osman" count to this day as excellent examples of South Slavic Baroque literature. In his late work Gundulić turned to religious poetry and thereby inspired a whole generation of imitators.

1704-1760

The Franciscan Kačić-Miošić was not content to study the holy scriptures and dispute with other scholars about eternity and the sacred; he had a pressing need to contribute to the enlightenment of the ordinary people. So he wrote the bestseller of Croatian literature par excellence: in "Pleasant Conversation of Slavic People" the poet recounts Croatian history in plain language, wisely and entertainingly, and addresses the ills of his time. Beyond that he also published numerous theological and philosophical works. Yet it is probably Kačić-Miošić's commitment to the often neglected common people that led to several monuments being raised to him - in Makarska, among other places.

1711 - 1787

Much as Leibniz in the German-speaking world, Bošković, born in Dubrovnik, is known in his homeland as one of the last universally educated men. He occupied himself with philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, mechanics, geophysics and meteorology. After professorships in Rome and Pavia, Bošković finally settled in Milan, founded and ran an observatory and wrote his most famous work: "Theory of Atoms".

1883-1962

As turbulent as the life of the greatest Croatian artist of his time was, so many-sided is his work too: from religious sculptures to the female nude, from Secession style to Classicism, from painting to building, Meštrović sought the limits of his talent. And with each of his objects he offered, at the time of its making, a comment on the current political situation of his current place of residence or of his homeland. For since he did not want to live under Italian occupation, the young Meštrović, scarcely returned from his studies in Vienna, had already to emigrate to the USA. The retrospective of his work is held as a permanent exhibition in a building and garden he designed himself in Split - he himself lies buried very close by, in native soil.

1876 - 1949

Vladimir Nazor earned his money as a village schoolteacher and translator; he became famous for his literature, which bears witness to a precise gift of observation, imagination, love of detail and an immense vocabulary. His most famous works are "Veli Jože", whose descriptions of nature seek their equal in vain; "The Bear Brundo", a fable inspired by "The Jungle Book"; and "The Shepherd Loda", which the author polished for eight years before he was willing to publish it. After all, in that novel he wanted to pay tribute to his country's two-thousand-year history and have his main character live through it. Beyond that he created a good many fairy tales, analogies, poems and stories - as varied as his style was, Nazor remained just as consistent in his choice of subject: the entire body of work deals with the history and beauty of Dalmatia.

1971 -

At a moment when the damage of the Yugoslav war had largely been repaired and Croatia, under a new government, wanted to open itself to the West and be admitted into various alliances of states, Goran Ivanišević's great hour arrived: the tennis professional from Split, once famous (and often also reprimanded) for his impulsive temperament, and for a long time delivering only mediocre performances, unexpectedly won the final at Wimbledon in 2001. The whole country celebrated its new star and identified with the outsider who had surprised everyone and yet had remained entirely his old self.