On Thursday, November 12th, Jasminka Ćus Rukonić, an archaeologist who dedicated a considerable portion of her career to the study of heraldry, gave a lecture entitled “The Coats of Arms in the Moise Palace“ at the Moise palace. The talk elaborated on the known coats of arms and their locations across the palace and explained how to interpret color when it comes to stone coats of arms. In the ensuing discussion, a couple of people from the audience shared their memories of the Moise family members from the past century.
The palace contains 35 coats of arms, most of which were revealed during the building’s recent reconstruction. Since most of these coats of arms – no less than 32 pieces – belong to the Petris family, the more recent scientific literature has been referring to the palace as the “Petris-Moise palace”.
There were several branches of the Petris family, but the most renowned branch was the one whose most famous descendant was Frane Petrić, a Renaissance philosopher and scientist. The lecture pointed out the differences between the coats of arms of various branches of the Petris family. The coats of arms on the newly discovered frescoes and painted wooden plates helped detect the building’s original owners: the most powerful branch of the Petris family. “We can rightfully say that we are now sitting in Frane Petrić’s salon“, Ćus Rukonić concluded.
Photos by Renato Muškardin
