European Heritage Days 2024: Exhibition commemorating 17th-century Croatian genius on view by 29 Oct 2024
On 15 October 2024, the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) hosted the opening of Marco Antonio de Dominis: A Visionary’s Perspective, an exhibition spotlighting an outstanding Croatian theologian, philosopher and scholar at the turn of the 17th century.
Jointly organised by the Library, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (CASA) and Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome in Rome as part of the Academy’s project aimed at the popularisation of Croatian cultural heritage (Upoznajmo hrvatsku znanstvenu baštinu), the exhibition, which is taking place as part of the 2024 European Heritage Days programme, will remain on view by 29 October 2024.
The achievements of the Dalmatian visionary presented through multimedia and digital content
Authored by the Senior Research Associate at the Division for the History of Natural and Mathematical Sciences at the CASA Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science Dr Marijana Borić, the exhibition is divided into three parts. While the first part gives a comprehensive overview of Dominis’s life and work, the second features the reprints of his major published titles and the third the selected academic and popular resources on Dominis.
Wishing to bring closer to a wider audience, especially to younger visitors, Dominis’s outstanding accomplishments, the exhibition programme features varied multimedia and interactive content, artwork inspired by Dominis and educational games thematising his life.
A visionary ahead of his time
Referred to by Goethe as a brilliant mathematician and physicist, Dominis was also mentioned in reports on the events at the English royal court between 1616 and 1622 by various emissaries to England. As a distinguished figure among the leading European intellectuals at the beginning of the 17th century, through his work he connected various regions of 17th-century Europe – his native Dalmatia, the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia, Habsburg empire, the kingdom of England and Scotland, Venice and the Papal States.
Through his versatile oeuvre he has made a major contribution to both Croatia’s and Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage, stealing the march even on Galileo with some of his interpretations. He was a relentless reformer and seeker of truth as well as a skilled rhetoric, who tried to put across a message of peace through all his endeavours.
One exhibition, two anniversaries
Put on as a way of commemorating the 400th anniversary of Dominis’s death, the exhibition also marks the 130th anniversary of the founding of the NSK Manuscripts and Old Books Collection, established in 1894 as the oldest among the NSK collections and holding a considerable number of Dominis’s works.
The exhibition was opened by the National Library Affairs Assistant to the NSK Director General Dr Sofija Klarin Zadravec, a Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Vjekoslav Jerolimov, the Head of the NSK Manuscripts and Old Books Collection Dr Irena Galić Bešker and the exhibition’s author Dr Marijana Borić, upon whose addresses the present visitors could dive into the by all means remarkable life of this unforgotten Croatian genius through a screening of the Croatian Radio Television’s documentary series, held as part of the exhibition’s opening.
