Supetar, Brac island
With its 3500 inhabitants Supetar is the biggest settlement on the island Brac, and the centre of the island. Beside the beaches and restaurants, we recommend you to visit the parish church of Mary Annunciation (18th century) with the surrounding buildings like Leroj (bell-tower with watch) and the church museum. here is the sculpture of St. Victor on the entrance of the museum, a work of the sculptor Petar Jaksic, who is also the author of the sculpture Mother Theresia on the entrance of the church court. Inside the church is the altar pala of the Blessed Virgin Mary with saints, a work of the local amateur painter Felix Tironi (1722 -1808), and the organ has constructed Petar Nakic in 1737.
Beside the church there are early Christian mosaics from the 6th century. The con temporary church is built on the foundations of an early Christian basilica onsecrated to St. Peter, from we owe the name of the today Supetar.
The white dome of the neo- Byzantine mausoleum of the family Petrinovic dominates over the bay of Supetar, a work of the sculptor Tome Rosandic (1878 -1957). It is on the cemetery by the church of Sv. Nikola. Beside it there are also two early Christian sarcophagus, and under the graveyard the ruins of a Roman villae rusticae. Many of the grave monuments are the work of the sculptor Ivan Rendic (1849 - 1932): the Pieta on the grave of Mihovil Franasovic, the secession grave of Rinaldo Culic, as well as the mausoleum of the family Radnic.
Rendic has spent his youth, and the last 11 years of life in Supetar. He has studied in Trieste, Venice and Florence and many experts consider that he has been the best Croatian sculptor in the 19th century. His 208 artistic works are dispersed in 51cities, but some of them you can see in the gallery "Ivan Rendic", which is within the library on the first floor. You will see also Rendics sculpture Alegory of mind in front of the gallery.
The church of St. Martin from the 18th century is situated on the same square. One of the 19 preserved early Romanic little churches on the island Brac, the church of sv. Luka from the turn of the 11th into the 12th century is located above Supetar. It is famous because of the oldest preserved narrative of a ship in Dalmatia, which is engraved on a wall inside the church.
You will see all around Supetar, mostly in olive- plantages and vineyards, but also on other places on the island Brac, many bunje, stony field- houses of round ground-plan with a doom as roof. It is supposed that the first houses of the pre- historical man looked like this. Today they serve generally for the keeping of agricultural tools.
