Image: Photos: Srećko Budek, Vedran Benović, MUO
Twenty-eight works by old masters from the Museum of Arts and Crafts (MUO) in Zagreb are on view in Split for the first time. "The Art of the Old Masters: A Selection from the Painting, Sculpture and Print Collections of the Museum of Arts and Crafts" opened on October 8, 2026, in the Old City Hall of the Museum of the City of Split, on the city's main square. The two museums are co-organizers of the exhibition.
The paintings, sculptures and prints date from the 14th to the 18th century. Their presence in Split is partly a result of circumstance: the MUO's own building in Zagreb is being renovated and its collections cannot currently be seen there. MUO director Sanjin Mihelić described the show as a continuation of the museum's long collaboration with Split, while Vesna Bulić Baketić, director of the Museum of the City of Split, called the historic City Hall a fitting setting for the works.
According to project leader and curator Antonia Došen, the exhibition grows out of an old-masters show first held in Ljubljana in 2024, when some of the works now in Split had not yet been restored. Sharing the findings of that conservation work with visitors was a central aim.
The painting section runs from "Saint John the Evangelist" by a follower of Paolo Veneziano, through a "Virgin and Child" by Andrija Medulić Schiavone, to "The Parting of Aeneas and Dido" from Guido Reni's workshop, which serves as the exhibition's main image. Jan Victors, the Dutch Golden Age painter commonly described as a pupil of Rembrandt, is represented by "Diogenes – Hominem quaero" (1654). A second "Diogenes," by a Neapolitan painter of the later 17th century, gained a new chapter in its history when X-rays revealed an overpainted image of an old woman beneath the visible scene.
Sculpture includes "The Meeting of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate" by Hans von Judenburg and "Archangel Gabriel" by Johannes (Ivan) Komersteiner. Among the prints are Girolamo Olgiati's "Entombment" after Julije Klović, Giulio Bonasone's "Judith and Holofernes" after Michelangelo, and a rare engraving of the same subject by Raffaello Guidi after Rubens.
The exhibition draws on several years of research into the MUO's old-master holdings, published in a scholarly monograph of the same name. It is curated by Antonia Došen with Petra Galović.
