‘SERMONS IN STONE’: ELEVENTH-CENTURY FIGURAL SCULPTURES FROM CROATIA TWO VOLUMES VOLUME 1

This thesis examines eleventh-century figural sculptures from Croatia by focusing on their iconography and potential symbolical significance. It consists of a detailed analysis of seventeen well-preserved carvings and an accompanying catalogue with six additional pieces, which are too damaged and fragmentary to be analyzed. These figural sculptures have been studied together on only two occasions, more than fifty years ago, and these publications focused on the manner of their carving and their dating. This stylistic approach has dominated the Croatian scholarship, and the investigation of the meaning of figural sculptures has been mostly sporadic and unsystematic. As such, it has created a vacuum in which the sculptures exist as catalogue entries in neat stylistic categories. In contrast, this thesis examines the figural sculptures by applying an iconographic analysis. This methodological approach investigates the visual sources for the schemes depicted, followed by the exploration of their iconographic significance, at the basis of which are the exegetical writings of early Christian and early medieval theologians. Thus, this thesis examines the figural sculptures in their contexts (architectural, religious and social) the results of which provide a deeper understandin