Maritime exhibition
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In honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Native Museum of the Town of Rovinj, a new Maritime Collection has recently been opened
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In honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Native Museum of the Town of Rovinj, a new Maritime Collection has recently been opened. The collection includes objects associated with the sea, the sailors, and the Rovinj fishing tradition. According to Argeo Curt, Director of the Museum, this collection, which mainly includes objects from the private collection of Baron George von Hűtterott stored in a castle on St. Andrew’s Island, has no historical or documentary but only an aesthetic value.
The collection is divided in several sections. The first section includes the paintings of well-known painters of boats and sea battles. One of the exhibited paintings is the painting Ribarice u rovinjskoj luci from 1954 painted by one of the founders of the Art Colony, Bruno Mascarelli. We should also mention, as part of this section, an oil painting by Alexander Kircher, the Viennese court painter, and a boat – painting of Basio Ivancovich from 1879. The second section is dedicated to the so-called votive paintings. Votive paintings are paintings ordered by sailors who had survived horrible ship wreckages, and later presented to churches as symbols of gratitude for the saved lives.
Some of the votive paintings exhibited as part of the new maritime collection have until recently been in the property of the Church of St. Mary of Mercy. The objects from the Far East collected by Baron Hűtterott during his exotic journeys make another section of this collection. Among them, a Chinese wooden fish used for predicting earthquakes draws special attention. What follows is a section dedicated to the Rovinj boat models. The models of batana, barcherin, and gousi, three characteristic boats of Rovinj made in 1980 by Francesco Benussi Scurlein, stand out. Two bigger boat models dominate the whole exhibition space.
The first is a sailing boat named “ San Lorenzo”, a work of an unknown author from the second half of the 19 th century; the other is a sailing boat from 1850 carrying no name and belonging to an unknown author.
