On the Operation of Pre-Romanesque Stone-Carving Workshops: The Stone-Carving Workshop of Kotor

Abstract

This paper offers new scholarly insights on the Stone-carving Workshop of Kotor, active in the southern Adriatic during the first half of the 9th century. Based on the significantly extended attribution of artworks to this workshop within Boka Kotorska, as well as a broader region from Dubrovnik’s Astarea to the Theme of Dyrrachium and further to Lezha, the author discusses the workshop’s importance in the local context, with a special emphasis on its relations with the immediately preceding Stone-carving Workshop from the time of bishop John of Kotor. The article also brings new hypotheses on the workshop’s working organization, the training system of its masters, and the divulgence of its production in the surrounding areas.