Two Heads from the Cave Church of St Anthony in St Anthony’s Channel, Šibenik

Abstract

In 1912, the eminent Croatian historian and archaeologist Don Luka Jelić visited the cave of St Anthony the Abbot in St Anthony’s Channel with the renowned Austrian art historian Hans Folnesics. On that occasion, he found a man’s head and a woman’s bust in the cave. The man’s head is now kept in the Šibenik City Museum, while the female bust was unfortunately stolen from this museum in the 1970s, and its later fate is unknown. The heads have hitherto remained outside the scope of art historical research. Therefore, this paper focuses on the issues of authorship, dating, and origin of the two heads from the former eremitic church of St Anthony the Abbot. As part of her research on the said heads, the author also discusses the sculpture that has been found to originate from the Šibenik Cathedral, but was removed during or after the restoration works that took place from 1848 to 1860.