The Collection of Vicko Solitro in the Zagreb Archaeological Museum

Kolekcija antičkih spomenika Vicka Solitra (1782. - ?) bila je sačinjena uglavnom od spomenika iz Salone, a svojim sadržajem zainteresirala je i austrijskoga cara Franju I. koji je odlučio vidjeti prilikom posjeta Splitu godine 1818. Zbirka je ostala u vlasništvu obitelji Solitro sljedećih pedeset godina te ponovno dolazi u fokus javnosti kada je ravnatelj Arheološkoga muzeja u Zagrebu Šime Ljubić (1822. - 1896.) objavio kako je otkupom od »baštinice« spasio Solitrovu ostavštinu koja umalo nije završila u privatnom posjedu kod inozemnoga kolekcionara. Iako potpuni inventar te zbirke nikada nije objavljen, može se barem djelomično rekonstuirati prema podacima iz literature.In the early 19th century, the European rulers advocated creating of more and more Classical monument collection that would bear characteristics of a common cultural heritage in their essentially heterogeneous multinational states. Previously formed private collections now gained additional values and the antiquity markets spread. In the first decades of the 19th century Salonitan monuments, too, encountered growing interest from both national institutions and private national and foreign collectors. In Split there were several collections, one of them having belonged to Vicko (Vicenzo) Solitro (1782 - ?). This collection was historically recorded for the first time in 1818, in the travel diary of the Austrian emperor, Francis I. In the mid 19th century, Šime Ljubić (1822 - 1896) purchased the collection for the Zagreb Archaeological Museum, however, its entire inventory has never been published. In the early 20th century, Josip Brunšmid (1858 - 1929), within the unit Stone Monuments of the Zagreb Archaeological Museum (Kameni spomenici Arheološkog muzeja u Zagrebu), published, among others, some of the monuments purchased by Ljubić some thirty years earlier. Although these works provide only partial information on the contents of the collection, they make valuable sources that provide insight into the richness o the Solitro\u27s collection and indicate the volume of the monuments found by the emperor in Split in the early 19th century