0245 A Symbol of Habsburg Military Power: the Slavonian General Command Palace in Osijek (1723)

  • Katarina Horvat-Levaj (Author)

    Katarina Horvat-Levaj graduated in art history and archaeology and received her doctor's degree from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. Since 1982 she has been employed at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, where she is now head of the scholarly research project "Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736) and Fortress-Towns on the South-Eastern Border of the Habsburg Monarchy". She has published numerous works and books, including a synthesis of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architecture in Croatia: Barokna arhitektura (Zagreb 2015). In 2003 and 2017, she was awarded the Croatian Annual National Award for Science, and in 2012, she received the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts' Annual Award. She teaches at the Art History Departments of Split University and Osijek University. Since 2019 she has been serving as the director of the Institute of Art History in Zagreb.

  • Margareta Turkalj Podmanicki (Author)

    Margareta Turkalj Podmanicki is an art historian and assistant professor at the J. J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, where she teaches courses in art and architecture from the fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. She attended professional training abroad, at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, 2016; at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Institut für kunst- und musikhistorische Forschungen (IKM), Vienna, 2017; and at the Digital Heritage Lab at the Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, 2019. She participates in international research projects and networks. Her scholarly interest focuses on the cultural heritage of eastern Croatia and its evaluation in the Croatian and Central European context, and includes modern digital methods in the research, valorization, and presentation of cultural heritage.

Identifiers (Article)

Abstract

The Palace of the Slavonian General Command in Osijek was built in 1723–1724 for the needs of the administration of the Slavonian Military Frontier, formed after the Karlowitz Treaty (1699). In keeping with its preeminent purpose as the seat of the Imperial War Council representatives, the palace stands out with a richly diversified exterior accentuated by a portal with atlantes, and a complex interior organized around a three-aisled vestibule. This gave it an outstanding position in the context of kindred administrative buildings in the wider Central-European region, indicating that the origins of the design were in the Baroque architecture of Vienna. The project itself emerged from the circle of military architects engaged in work on the border fortress cities of the Habsburg Monarchy, whose fortification was supervised by Eugene of Savoy, as President of the Imperial War Council.

Statistics

loading
Language
en
Keywords
Croatia, Osijek, Baroque architecture, three-aisled vestibule, portal with atlantes, General Command Palace