Antonija Krasnik was born in Lovinac in 1874; in Croatian cultural history she takes a special place of the first Croatian woman applied artist and designer. However, her work has remained to date insufficiently researched and evaluated so that after a short but exceptionally successful period of her work and affirmation at European level she became a part of the stereotype of many women authors at the turn from 19th to 20th century, who were soon forgotten.
After her schooling in Zagreb and first lectures in art which she received from Bela Čikoš Sesija and Robert Frangeš Mihanović, she received scholarship at the recommendation of Iso Kršnjavi for the famous Viennese Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) where she studied in the class of Koloman Moser, one of the leading protagonists of art déco. After Vienna, she further practiced at the Paris Académie Julian (E. Carriére), and her career ended after marrying Baron Rudolf Sommarugu in 1907. Already during her schooling, she proved successful in various areas of creative expression, from painting and sculpturing to decorative shaping of objects in glass, metal and ceramics, in designing furniture, bijou, fabric, clothes and fashion accessories. Characteristic are her vases in irised glass, made after her drawings and by using the supreme technology of the Czech factory Johann Lötz Witwe, especially those of unusual shapes like owls, fishes or monkeys. Her inclination to ornaments with strong symbolic charge is also evident in the bijou, cigarette case and other objects of goldshmitry and jewelry with motifs of stylised insects. Apart from fashion accessories, she was also engaged in designing fabrics and clothes which she wore herself.
She participated at numerous exhibitions of decorative art in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, London, St. Louis, Torino and Paris and her works were published in the most prominent European journals for art and culture. Thus, a respectable English journal The Studio published in 1904 a supplement about her atelier, furnished to the last detail with furniture, decorative fabrics and objects she herself had designed. Independently of the medium, in all works by Antonija Krasnik evident is superior delicacy in shaping decorative objects and objects of use, which is an authentic expression of the spirit of time and style at the turn of the century, but above all a peculiar expression of her aesthetic sensibility. Antonija Krasnik died in 1956 in Zagreb.
Stjepan Gradić was a diplomat and polihistorian. He was born on 6 March 1613 in Dubrovnik where he also received his primary education. In 1629 he leaves for Rome where until 1634 he attends one humanist grade and three years of philosophy at the Jesuit University Collegium Romanum. He studied civil and religious law at the universities in Fermi (1634 – 1636) and Bologna (1636 – 1638). After returning to Rome, he studied theology for four years whereupon he was ordained priest. In Bologna, on the part-time basis, he also attended lectures in mathematics by Galileo’s friend and co-worker B. Cavalieri, and in Rome by Galileo' pupil B. Castelli. In 1634 he returned home and soon became a canon of the cathedral choir, deputy of the Dubrovnik archbishop and the prebendary abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Cosmas and Damian on the island of Pašman.
After private journey to Rome in 1653 he got a job in Roman Curia as diplomatic representative of the Republic of Dubrovnik to the Holy See and remained there until his death on 02 May 1683. The Pope Innocent X appointed him in 1654 an official at the Secretariat for Correspondence with Christian States; in 1658 he got the job of expert adviser to the Congregation of the index of forbidden books; in 1661 he became second custodian of the Vatican Library and in 1682 its first director. At this position he became known due to his devoted work on cataloguing the existing and the acquisition of new valuable foundations and books. At the Pope's State Secretariat he enjoyed the reputation of an expert for Slavic people and for Ottoman issues and advocated the expulsion of Ottoman Turks from Europe by an alliance of European states.
From his very beginnings in literature, accepted before the Second World War as the author of particular literary skill and sensibility, Ranko Marinković asserted himself in the second half of the 20th century as the key personality in Croatian literature, a writer of explicit critical vocation, interested in contemporary topics, but also a creator of strong intellectual reflection – ready for the challenges of radical modernism and open to probations of postmodern relativism. He tried almost all genres and proved his creativity as an exceptional story teller, novel writer, dramatist, critic and essayist.
Born in Vis on 22 February 1913, he deeply inhaled the atmosphere of his Mediterranean island ambience, but even more, recognised peculiar, interesting characters and conflict situations of small, closed provincial milieus. Inspired by the sequences of his native microcosms and presented by a mixture of empathy and caricature, subtlety and grotesque, there appeared his early works: drama Albatros (Albatross, staged in 1939) and the whole series of novellas gathered in a representative book entitled Proze (Proses, published in 1948). His dense narrative opus was epochally supplemented by the issue of a short story collection Ruke (Hands, 1953) which puts the writer in the first plan of the then actual liberation from the so far prevailing realistic conventions and the poster-type social engagement. Especially programmatically complete is his short story Zagrljaj (Embrace), as a kind of with anecdote and vivid dialogues equipped discussion on the relation between writing and living, on unbreakable connections with the repressive reality and on endless reflecting, plunging and mutual absorbing of excited presentations.
Milka Trnina (or Ternina) was born in Vezišće (Moslavina) on 19 December 1863. She was Croatian opera artist (soprano), the greatest among a number of distinguished singers whom Croatia gave to the world in the 19th and 20th century. She was celebrated as one of the greatest singers of her time, with beautiful, powerful and carrying voice and perfect singer's technique, of gracious scenic appearance, noble face and - especially pointed out - unique, magic acting. In the history of world opera art, known as “legendary Ternina“, she is still referenced in all encyclopaedias.
Born as miller's daughter, she became world famous due to her great talent, her God-given voice, diligence and excellent education. As a girl, she came into the house of a relative and writer Janko Jurković in Zagreb, where she received her first music lectures from Ida Wimberger. Then she left for Vienna to study at the Academy with Joseph Gänsbacher, at that time the best teacher of singing. Already as a student she sang at concerts in Vienna, Zagreb, and in Varaždinske Toplice since 1879 and her first opera performance was in Zagreb, the role of Amelia in A Masked Ball (G. Verdi) in 1882.
