Famous Croats

Ivan Krstitelj Rabljanin (John the Baptist of Rab)

Born in Rab around 1470, John the Baptist of Rab was accepted into the service of the Dubrovnik Republic in 1505 as a cannon and bell caster, where he served as head master craftsman the until his death in 1540. The Minor Council assigned him lodgings and a workshop at Revelin, and the Trade Brotherhood of St. Anthony admitted him into its ranks in 1509, when he also became a citizen of Dubrovnik. John the Baptist of Rab, among other things, made one of the longest contemporary culverins (cast in 1505, exhibited at the Vienna Museum of Military History today), several cannons from the Lovrijenac Fort (1531-1536), and the cannon known as ‘The Lizard’ (1537), which, as the legend has it, fell into the sea when the Austrian authorities tried to take it down the wall of the Fort, and is probably still there. He also cast the large bronze cannon for the Minčeta Tower, which was taken to Vienna in 1813 and later remelted. He probably made a number of ship cannons for the Dubrovnik fleet as well, especially for the twelve large galleons that joined the Spanish Navy during the campaign of Charles V in Tunisia in 1535, but these have not been preserved. One of his medium-sized galleon cannons from 1524, decorated with renaissance ornaments and the image of St. Blaise, was taken to the Ebenfurt Castle in Austria after the Austrian occupation in the early 19thcentury, and was later exhibited at the German National Museum in Nuremberg. The Republic sold his cannons to Italy and Spain, and John the Baptist of Rab worked for private ship owners in Dubrovnik and for forts in Italy too, with the Republic’s permission.

His work includes the bell for the Dubrovnik Clock Tower, adorned with the images of Virgin Mary and St. Blaise (1506), the bell for the Dubrovnik Cathedral (1510), remelted during World War I, the bell for the Dominican Church, adorned with reliefs of St. Dominic and St. Tomas Aquinas (1516), and bells for a multitude of other churches in Dubrovnik, Kotor, Koločep, Ston and elsewhere.

A master craftsman and exquisite decorator, John the Baptist of Rab skilfully used a wide array of renaissance ornaments to add finesse and elegance to his pieces. He was also engaged in a variety of trade and maritime trade businesses.

Darja Tomić
Senior Lexicographer

Lelja Dobronić

Her distinction and eminence matched only by her selflessness and altruism, historian and art historian Lelja Dobronić (1920-2006) is one of the few people who can be credited with rebuilding old Zagreb through in-depth, well-researched history. This uncompromising scientist came from a stimulating creative background: her father Antun Dobronić was a composer, her mother a musician, her sister Rajka Dobronić a harpist, and her husband Pavao Vuk-Pavlović a philosopher. In addition to science and art, Lelja Dobronić was passionate about nature and loved mountains, fresh air, difficult climbs, and the joy of scaling mountaintops and taking in distant horizons, as if her inner and outer world existed in an interchange of metaphors.

Lelja Dobronić graduated from the Classical Languages Secondary School in Zagreb in 1939 and earned her degree in Art and Culture History with Classical Archaeology and National and World History from the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1943. In 1946, she earned a PhD in the history of wrought iron art in Northern Croatia. She worked as the curator of the City Museum of Gypsum Casts (Gipsoteka) and as the research associate of the Museum of the City of Zagreb, the Regional Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, the Museum Documentation Centre, the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, and the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography. For thirteen years, until her retirement in 1980, she served as the director of the Croatian History Museum. Lelja Dobronić taught at postgraduate courses in Zadar and was the founder and editor of the magazine Vijesti muzealaca i konzervatora Hrvatske[Bulletin of Museum Professionals and Conservators of Croatia]. She invested boundless energy in the study of Zagreb’s history in the field and in archives, in particular the city’s architecture, urbanism and lifestyle. She also studied the city periphery, summer residences, gardens and parks in the 17th, 18thand 19thcenturies, as well as the historical topography of bishops’ and Kaptol’s estates and the history of religious orders such as the Knights Templar, the Order of St. John, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre and the Order of St. Augustine. Lelja Dobronić published the first overview and report on Croatian museums. Her enormous bibliography includes more than five hundred scientific papers, forty books she authored and more than two hundred lexicographer entries. She received a number of distinguished awards for her work, including the Award of the City of Zagreb and the Pavao Ritter Vitezović Lifetime Achievement Award.

With the clarity and beauty of her discourse and her riveting choice of topics, Lelja Dobronić rendered top-level science into love for Zagreb and Croatia. Her works, such asZagrebački Gornji grad nekad i danas[Zagreb’s Upper Town in the Past and the Present],Biskupski i kaptolski Zagreb[Bishops’ and Kaptol’s Zagreb],Zagrebačka biskupska tvrđa[Zagreb Bishops’ Fort], Zaboravljeni zagrebački graditelji[The Forgotten Builders of Zagreb],Graditelji i izgradnja Zagreba u doba historijskih stilova[The Builders and the Development of Zagreb at the Time of Historical Styles], and many others, are not just mandatory reference works, but also a valuable source of information about the sentiments of Zagreb residents about their city. The amount of archival materials she studied and published is far too great to fit into one lifetime, unless it is Lelja Dobronić’s lifetime.

Academician Željka Čorak

Count Janko Drašković

Count Janko Drašković (Zagreb, 1770 - Radkersburg, 1856) was a Croatian politician active in the Croatian National Revival. After receiving a private education, he studied philosophy and law in Vienna. A highly educated polyglot, Drašković joined the Philanthropes réunis Freemasons Lodge in Paris in 1808. After he left the military in 1792, having sustained a leg injury, Drašković returned to active military service in the Napoleonic Wars, rising to colonel rank. Since 1792, he served as a Member of the Croatian Parliament. After 1825, he was elected as a Member of the joint Hungarian Parliament several times, where he stood up against Hungary’s efforts to restrict Croatia’s autonomy and force its language on Croatia.

His most important work, Disertatia iliti razgovor[Dissertation or Discussion] (Karlovac, 1832) is the first political brochure written in the Croatian language, in the Shtokavian dialect, presenting the first comprehensive political, social, cultural and economic programme for a gradual transformation of the Croatian society, modelled on England and Hungary. Drašković advocated an independent Croatian government, territorial integrity of Croatia, the introduction of the Croatian language (Shtokavian dialect) as the official language in Croatia, and an educational reform to advance the feudal society. Young intelligentsia with an urban background embraced his conservative modernisation programme, making it the political, social and cultural programme of the Revival Movement, which Drašković defended as a Croatian representative in the Hungarian Parliament 1832-1836, and promoted among Croatian elites. Side by side with Ludevit Gaj, Drašković became one of the leaders of the Revival Movement,publishing several patriotic poems in its magazine, Danica ilirska.In Ein Wort an Illyriens hochherzige Töchter(1838), Drašković criticised upper-class Croatian women for accepting the German language and culture and urged them to raise their children as patriots and use the Croatian language. He participated in the development of the fundamental institutions of the Revival Movement, including the Illyrian Reading Room, the People’s Museum, the cultural society Matica ilirska, whose President he was 1842-1851, the People’s Theatre, and the Economic Society.

Vlasta Švoger, PhD
Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb