Name of Monument:

Ratkaj Palace

Location:

Miljana, North-West Croatia, Croatia

Date:

17th–18th centuries

Artists:

Architect unknown; painter: Anton Joseph (Jožef) Lerchinger (Lerhinger) (c. 1720–after 1787)

Denomination / Type of monument:

Secular, Baroque two-winged palace

Patron(s):

The noble Ratkaj family

History:

The palace, of which the first building phase dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, was owned by the noble Ratkaj family until the end of the 18th century (1793), during which time the owners undertook several important reconstructions and enlargements of the complex and through which the current spatial organisation took shape.

Description:

Inside the two-winged, two-storey palace, the lower, two-winged ground-floor buildings enclose the inner courtyard. The oldest part of the palace is the rear wing, constructed in the 16th century as a fortified grange. Renaissance features are still extant, manifested in the shape of the courtyard passage, which opens up on both floors with arcades; a similar model was repeated for the side-wing extension in the 17th century. The facade of the two-wing palace was painted with what at the time was a characteristic dark-grey graphite colour with white and yellow accents along the apertures, pillars and arcades and, as an expression of an increasingly high standard of living at the beginning of the 18th century, along the external façade of the side-wing. The addition of annexes for the sanitary facilities improves the architectural projection, articulated with dynamic stucco decorations. The last important architectural development was the addition of a ground-floor wing at the front. Opened up with a grand, central portal surmounted by a small turret, in a formal sense it marked the achievement of the Baroque aspiration for emphasising the central axis and the formation of deep spatial effects.

The Ratkaj complex in Miljana is one of the best preserved examples of a Baroque palace in northwest Croatia. It is a historically stratified complex, composed of a two-winged, two-storey building that closes-off a courtyard. The Baroque fondness for the scenic manifests in the disposition of the higher residential wings with porticoes, which open up with arcades and lower floor utility buildings accented with a tower. The main value of the palace consists in the Early Baroque paintings on the façade and the Rococo frescoes of the interior.

How Monument was dated:

Documentation and stylistic features.

Special features

Allegories of the Four Seasons, Four Temperaments and Four Elements

Wall of the working cabinet, Ratkaj Palace

1763

Anton Joseph (Jožef) Lerchinger (Lerhinger) (c. 1720–1787)

Four allegories representing the Four Seasons, the Four Stages of Life, the Four Elements, Four Tempers and, finally, the Four Senses, painted by Anton Jožef Lerchinger after prints by Johann Georg Bergmüller (Turkheim, Schwaben 1688 – Augsburg 1762) from Augsburg.

Sanguinic

Wall of the working cabinet, Ratkaj Palace

1763

Anton Joseph (Jožef) Lerchinger (Lerhinger) (c. 1720–1787)

Phlegmatic

Wall of the working cabinet, Ratkaj Palace

1763

Anton Joseph (Jožef) Lerchinger (Lerhinger) (c. 1720–1787)

Pastoral theme

Wall of the working cabinet, Ratkaj Palace

c. 1763

Unknown

Selected bibliography:

Marković, V., Barokni dvorci Hrvatskog zagorja, Zagreb, 1975, pp. 48–51, 112–114.
Obad-Šćitaroci, M., Perivoji i dvorci Hrvatskog zagorja, Zagreb, 1989, pp. 97–99.
 Cevc, A., Anton Jožef Lrhinger, catalogue of the exhibition, Narodna galerija, Ljubljana, 2007, pp. 139–144.

Citation of this web page:

Katarina Horvat-Levaj "Ratkaj Palace" in "Discover Baroque Art", Museum With No Frontiers, 2026.
https://baroqueart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=monument;BAR;hr;Mon11;21;en

Prepared by: Katarina Horvat-LevajKatarina Horvat-Levaj

SURNAME: Horvat-Levaj
NAME: Katerina

AFFILIATION: Institute of Art History, Zagreb

TITLE: PhD, Scientific Consultant

CV:
Katerina Horvat-Levaj graduated with a BA in Art History and Archaeology in 1981 from the University of Zagreb (Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Art History). In 1985 she obtained her MA and in 1988 she was awarded a scholarship at the University of Padua. In 1995 she defended her Doctorate at Zagreb University on Representative Residential Architecture of the Baroque in Dubrovnik. Since 1982, she has been employed at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, and is presently a Senior Research Associate. Katarina also teaches at the University of Split. At the University of Zagreb she participates at doctoral level in the Faculty of Croatian Studies and the faculties of Architecture and Philosophy.
Translation by: Graham McMaster
Translation copyedited by: Mandi GomezMandi Gomez

Amanda Gomez is a freelance copy-editor and proofreader working in London. She studied Art History and Literature at Essex University (1986–89) and received her MA (Area Studies Africa: Art, Literature, African Thought) from SOAS in 1990. She worked as an editorial assistant for the independent publisher Bellew Publishing (1991–94) and studied at Bookhouse and the London College of Printing on day release. She was publications officer at the Museum of London until 2000 and then took a role at Art Books International, where she worked on projects for independent publishers and arts institutions that included MWNF’s English-language editions of the books series Islamic Art in the Mediterranean. She was part of the editorial team for further MWNF iterations: Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean Virtual Museum and the illustrated volume Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean.

True to its ethos of connecting people through the arts, MWNF has provided Amanda with valuable opportunities for discovery and learning, increased her editorial experience, and connected her with publishers and institutions all over the world. More recently, the projects she has worked on include MWNF’s Sharing History Virtual Museum and Exhibition series, Vitra Design Museum’s Victor Papanek and Objects of Desire, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s online publication 2 or 3 Tigers and its volume Race, Nation, Class.

MWNF Working Number: HR 27