Plomin Tablet - Dating and Interpretation

Dating and Interpretation

If the Glagolitic inscription is dated to the 11th century, than that date is terminus post quem non for the genesis of the relief, i.e. its upper bound. Lower bound is the Late Antique. Between that large range—from Late Antique to Early Romanesque—it is less probable that this work would have come into existence in the centuries from the 8th to the first half of the 11th century, because in that period the sculptural works used wattle ornaments, a stylistically marked type of creation, a tradition which rules out naturalistic conceptions of human figure.

Following this line of thought, Branko Fučić has in 1953, publishing Plomin tablet for the first time, formed an alternative theory according to which the relief

...should be looked upon as a primitive provincial work of Late Antique (either pagan or Christian), or as an early Romanesque work, which after the period of wattle ornamentation reintroduces human figure into sculptural works. At any case, the connections of monument with the Late Antique plastics are beyond any doubt. They represent either the very much alive Antique tradition, or the imitation of the medieval carver of some Antique template.

Reflecting on Fučić's alternative interpretation, academician Ljubo Karaman has laid his arguments, deciding for a medieval origin of the relief.

Following Karaman's arguments and his own later iconographic studies, Fučić has voiced an opinion that this figure represents Saint George—a saint to whom Plomin church is dedicated to. This conclusion was induced by the attribute the Plomin tablet figure hold in his hand. Fučić was unable to identify the object in the (back then) available repertoire of Roman plastics attributes that would match with the attribute of Plomin tablet figure. These were not fork or a fish gig but a three-leaved branch, a symbol of vegetation; it must have been an abbreviation for the conception of vegetation.

Christian iconography can interpret that attribute by a palm branch—of course, in a stylised, non-naturalistic form—and palm is a symbol of martyrs. Saint George only in the time of Crusades has become an idolized knight, horse-rider, dragon-slayer. In older Christian iconography he is but a messenger of faith and a martyr, and hence the martyr palm would suffice as an adequate attribute. By comparing the Plomin tablet figure with the remains of fresco from the ruinous church of Saint George near Vrbnik on the island of Krk, where this saint is portrayed not with one vegetational attribute but with two (holding one in each hand), Fučić has interpreted this unusual, exceptional iconography as a contamination of the perception of Saint George the martyr (holding a palm in his hand) with a perception of Croatian folk "green George" (Croatian: zeleni Juraj) which carries spring greenery in his hand.

In his later work, Fučić concludes that he was an a secondary path to a proper solution. Later he summarily describes the problem and solutions as follows:

  1. Neither on East nor on West there is no extant artwork of Saint George before the 10th century.
  2. If the carver had in mind in the 11th century (when the Glagolitic inscription is dated) to display Saint George, it is beyond any doubt that he would have carved essential saintly attribute, the aureola, which is absent from this monument.
  3. The relief is — concordantly — older. Fučić argues for his initial dating to Late Antique period.
  4. Another interpretation becomes apparent where the Plomin tablet figures represents ancient, antique "green George", a pagan Silvanus with vegetational attribute in hand, as can be seen in a similar iconography on one antique Istrian relief in the Buzet museum.

Glagolitic inscription is, therefore, secondary; it's graffiti. The fact that the relief was embedded in a church wall was conditioned by a subsequent folk reinterpretation, which in the imagery of Silvanus saw a portrait of Saint George, though probably still contaminated with the earlier conception of "green George".

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Famous quotes containing the word dating:

    We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man’s existence on the globe.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)