Dear friends and associates of the Stari Grad Museum,
we are pleased to invite you to the presentation of Aldo Čavić’s book Images of Renaissance Hvar on Monday, 23 September at 8pm in the Town Library and Reading Room.
The book (full title Images of Renaissance Hvar: An Image of the Identity of the Hvar Commune in the Literature of the 16th century) is a doctoral dissertation by the author defended at the University of Zadar in 2018.
On the basis of historical material and literary sources, Aldo Čavić made an effort to construct an image of the identity of the Hvar commune in the aforementioned period, marked by particularly intense growth after the so-called commoners’ revolt (1510-14). While the testimonies of Venetian officials and foreign pilgrims are scarce with objective data and occasionally marked by the “exoticism”, local literacy is also not very documental, but through verses and letters (especially epistles) it offers serious insight into the civilizational level achieved. The author of this book first of all systematically studied how our literary history outlined the contributions of the Renaissance Hvar circle, and then independently elaborated on the mutual relations of the protagonists and their influences. Čavić’s idea of two adjacent intellectual fields is innovative and stimulating and leads us to a more complex view of Hvar as a place of cultural gravity, but also of a kind of polarization. Lucić’s work (as the centre of the first, earlier field) and the meaning of Hektorović (as the instigator of the second field, around the middle of the century and beyond) are much wider than local coordinates, giving the island of Hvar the role of the most vivid exchange of humanistic ideas and creative response in several areas.
Aldo Čavić was born in Split in 1958 and completed his elementary and high school education on his home island of Hvar. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zadar in 1982 with a Croatian or Serbian language and Yugoslav Literature and Philosophy, and received his PhD in 2018 from the same university.
His professional work was marked by his early return to the island. He first taught Croatian at the Elementary School in Stari Grad, and philosophy, ethics and sociology at Jelsa High School. Since 1988 he has been a professional public worker in culture. He is the founder and leader of various cultural institutions: the Stari Grad Town Library and Reading Room, the Music Elementary School in Stari Grad, the Stari Grad Cultural centre, the Agency for the Management of the Stari Grad Plain, and the Stari Grad Museum, of which he is still the director. He has organised and staged numerous art and heritage exhibitions and is the organiser or co-organiser of several heritage workshops and conferences. He led the restoration of Petar Hektorović’s Tvrdalj and other cultural monuments.
Since 1996 he has been the editor and publisher of numerous books and exhibition catalogues. He published Stari Grad: A Guide to the History of the Town (2004), together with the Polish photographer Pawel Jaroszewski a monograph Discovering Hvar (2010), and with the archaeologist Sara Popović he co-authored the book Stari Grad Plain (2012). The Politeo Collection published his collection of poems Catalepton (with Zlatan Vrkljan’s etchings) in 1987.
The promotion is jointly organized by the Stari Grad Town Library and Reading Room, Matica hrvatska branch in Hvar and Croatian University Press. Besides the author, the book will be presented by Tonko Maroević, Dino Milinović, Kuzma Kovačić and Anita Šikić.
We look forward to your visit!