Giorgio di Matteo da Sebenico e il “rinascimento alternativo” nel ‘400 adriatico”,

The Loggia dei Mercanti is the most significant civil building in Ancona, not just for its intrinsic artistic value but also as a lay symbol of the successful mercantile activity that characterized the history and development of the Dorian city. Its façade, decorated in the distinctive style known as “Adriatic Gothic” and now restored, is one of the masterpieces of the Croatian sculptor and architect Giorgio di Matteo da Sebenico. His entire body of work is a testimony to just how variegated and complex and how little deterministic was the evolution toward what we call the “Renaissance” language, poised between a nascent and still undefined process of revival of classical models and the parallel persistence of a “romantically” Gothic sensitivity, out of choice and not cultural backwardness. This last is particularly discernible in the taste of clients in regions not yet won over by the “enlightened” culture of Florence, such as Venice, Siena, Ancona and Dalmatia.