Recovery of a vandalized canvas painting our Lady of the Rosary from Vrlika (Croatia)

Abstract

This study is related to the major recovery project of an 18th century oil painting on canvas depicting Our Lady of the Rosary, the patron saint of the parish community of Vrlika and its surroundings. During the Croatian War of Independence in 1992 it was taken off the main altar and vandalized by the paramilitary units. This resulted in termination of a century long tradition of annual feasts in Vrlika in which the painting was publicly displayed and carried by the townsmen. Based on the available visual materials: a high resolution old black and white photograph and the low resolution coloured one, respectfully, using the computer colorization algorithm, and also relying on detailed visual analysis of the original paint layer, a major reconstruction was carried out in 2017. This research has demonstrated that the recovery of the artworks with dramatic losses is an extremely complex social phenomenon difficult to characterize by any general factor or based on any general approach.

Publication
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Mario Cvetković
Mario Cvetković
Associate Professor | Department of Electrical Engineering Fundamentals

Associate professor at FESB in Split, with a research focus on numerical modeling including finite element and moment methods, computational bioelectromagnetics and heat transfer related phenomena. He is involved in IEEE’s ICES Technical Committee 95, various international projects and is committed to advancing both knowledge and practical applications in electromagnetic safety and biomedical engineering.