The town of Supetar, island of Brač in Croatia

Supetar is also a commune of approximately 4000 inhabitants, which understands the town of Supetar itself and three other localities: Splitska, Škrip and Mirca. The common one is part of the county of Split-Dalmatia.

Supetar is the principal main door of the island of Brač thanks to the transporters of Jadrolinija which connects it in 50 minutes to the town of Split on the continent.

Under the Venetian domination then Austro-Hungarian, Supetar bore Italian name of San Pietro della Brazza (Saint Peter de Brač).

Supetar developed around a small natural port, at the bottom of bay of Saint Peter.

Nerežišća, the old capital of the island, whose Supetar was the port, is to approximately 8 km inside.

The old basilica Saint Peter had been restored in 1604, but was destroyed by a fire in 1727; it was rebuilt in 1733 in the style baroque of the 18th century, with the addition of naves. As of its foundation the new church was devoted to the Happy Virgin Mary.

In 1887, the church of the 18th century having become too small, it had to be increased with the double of its size to reach its current size and its form (40 meters length); on this occasion it lost much of its style original baroque. The bell-tower was built in 1861; it is 35 m high.

Under the high altar the tomb of saint Victor is whose relics were brought to Supetar since the Roman catacombs in 1853. Each May 2nd, the reliquary of saint Victor is carried through the city.

In the old part of the church there are some tomb stones carrying of the Croatian and Italian, Latin inscriptions.

Fabrics, fixed on the side walls, of which the “Virgin with the Saints”, are the work of a painter of Supetar, Feliks Tironi (1722-1808).

The organ of the church is a manufacturing of the factor Petar Nakić in 1737.

Outside the Museum, a sculpture is on stone representing holy Victor: it is a work of Petar Jakšić, a contemporary sculptor originating in Donji Humac.

There, close to the Saint Nicholas church - beside the wall external of the church - are the two more beautiful early Christian sarcophagi of the island of Brač, decorated on their front face with low-reliefs with crosses surrounded by rings, and, on their oval lids, of long crosses engraved over the entire length.

Below cemetery the ruins of a Roman “villa rustica are”.

Besides the extravagant mausoleums, the cemetery presents decorations surprising, even on the most modest steles.

Some of these tomb stones are the work of the famous sculptor Ivan Rendić, the father of the Croatian modern sculpture: some of the best examples are the low-relief of Piéta, above tomb of Mihovil Franasović; the tomb of style Art nouveau of Rinaldo Culić (close to the entry); and the mausoleum of the Radnić family; the low-relief of the head of Christ and the portrait of a man on the tomb of F. Pizzoli; the head of Christ on the tomb of the famous singer of opera, Mr. Vučković. Many of these portraits and sculptures out of stone carry the mark of the strong personality of the sculptor, with an underlined realistic character.

The mausoleum of the family Rendić, one of most imposing, located to the bottom of the cemetery, has all the characteristics of the style of Ivan Rendić. However, the sculptor - who spent his last days in poverty and bitter loneliness on Glavica - was finally buried in a fall foreign into this same cemetery in which it left some of his monuments.

Located at the center of the cemetery, the Saint Nicholas church, the Petrinović mausoleum dominates the other tombs of its surmounted cupola of a winged angel. With its enormous sarcophagus, the mausoleum introduces to a pompous style to the Eastern influences néo-égypto-Byzantines, and seems a foreign monument in this harmonious small Mediterranean cemetery.

Ivan Rendić had ardently wished to work on the tomb of the Petrinović family for whom it had already carried out a work, the stone statue of Hercegovka (the woman of Herzegovina) and had outlined the project of mausoleum. However the emigrating rich person Frane Petrinović saw the monumental mausoleum of the Račić family in Cavtat, carried out by the sculptor Ivan Meštrović, and cancelled the order placed with Ivan Rendić. By honesty towards its growing old fellow-member, Meštrović nobly refused to take the order and this one was entrusted to T. Rosandić.

“Accompanied by the breeze, filled of the scents of the plants and the shrubs of the island, I visited initially the felt cemetery… Ici I the deep melancholy of Supetar and of all this coastal region… the wind coming from the pines went up to these cypresses… And when I suddenly heard the notes of a guitar, time slipped through my fingers like impalpable rays of light. I was not, to tell the truth, in mood to cry, but I felt that I became sentimental and that I it had not been since very, very a long time…”

The site of the chapel offers beautiful sights on the center of the island and the channel of Brač (Brački kanal). One can go there, since Supetar, while assembling the old steep way or the road in the direction of Nerežišća, while passing through the wood of pines. To go to the street Petra Jakšica, then to take the street Svetog Roka and to cross the main roads to join the old way of Saint Roch.

The new village, named Supetar, is mentioned for the first time in 1423. Supetar will be the port of the capital of Brač, Nerežišća, during four centuries.

Ivan Rendić studied initially in Venice where it followed the Academy of the Art schools in 1871, then in Florence where it studied during several years in the workshops of sculpture of Masters florentins. He lived and worked then in Trieste, where he carried out most of his works. But it was there the target of attacks of the italianists, because of his support for the Movement of the Croatian Rebirth.

Its work - of approximately two hundred statues - is characterized by a realistic style with elements of naturalism, in particular in the details of the treatment. But it often carried out astonishing marriages of styles and influences, mixing without complex the Byzantine, the Greek, the Egyptian…

Its most famous works were public monuments, high in honor of famous Croats, who are in all the areas of Croatia: in Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Trieste, Krapina, and especially in Zagreb, in the Zrinjevac park. It was also chosen by most large families for their monuments.

Starting from 1921 he lived in Supetar, where he tried without success to create a school of arts. He finished his life in poverty and died in the lapse of memory with the old people’s home of the poor of Zagreb.

Outside the gallery, one can also see the sculpture of Ivan Rendić representing the “Allegory of the Spirit”.

Schedules: 8:00 at 15:30 (22 H in summer).

Telephone: 00,385 (0) 21,630,551

Website: www.supetar.hr

From 8 to 14 passages per day according to the season (of 5:00 at midnight in summer).

Duration of the crossing: 50 minutes.

Telephone: 00,385 (0) 21,631,357

Website: www.jadrolinija.hr

The bus station is located near the unloading dock of the ferry.