Sculptor Orazio Bonetti between Friuli, Kvarner, and Dalmatia

Abstract

Orazio Bonetti was one of the many Friulian sculptors active in the 18th century, and hitherto almost unknown in Croatia. He was born around 1700, most likely in Venice, where he began his schooling and then went to Friuli and Ljubljana, becoming an assistant to Francesco Robba. Due to the scarcity of documents and the fact that many of his works have been lost, details of the master’s life and artistic itinerary have remained largely unknown and unrelated. On this occasion, Bonetti has been credited with statues in the Salesian monastery of San Vito al Tagliamento, the church of San Cristoforo in Udine, and the parish churches in Nogaredo di Prato and in Adegliacco. In the second half of the 1740s, Bonetti lived with his family in Ljubljana and collaborated with the Rijeka sculptor Antonio Michelazzi, producing statues for the altar of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the parish church of Pazin. He then moved to Rijeka, and after 1763 set out for Dalmatia. In Orlec on the island of Cres, he carved statues for the high altar of the parish church, and in 1766 he decorated in marble the altar of the Immaculate Conception in the Zadar Cathedral. He is also the author of monumental statues of St Sylvester and St Thomas, today in Lovreć, which he made in 1768 for the former church of St Sylvester in Zadar. The master’s presence in Zadar is indirectly confirmed by a record of the death of his wife Catarina, who was buried in 1770 in the church of St Marcella.