A press photograph of the crowd at the unveiling of Ivan Meštrović's monument to Svetozar Miletić. The bronze stands high on its plinth, coat swinging, one fist raised above the head, and the drapery that covered it lies over the rail at the right. The square is packed: hats and overcoats to the horizon, women in front holding flowers, wreaths banked along the barrier in the foreground, and the shopfronts and first-floor windows of the square behind. The autumn coats and the wreaths fit a ceremony held in October 1939, the date the photograph carries.
About this place
The monument to Svetozar Miletić (1826-1901), mayor of Novi Sad and the foremost leader of the Serbs in the Habsburg monarchy, stands on Trg slobode in front of the Town Hall. The decision to raise it was taken in 1926, the centenary of Miletić's birth. Ivan Meštrović's bronze, five metres high on a pedestal of two, shows Miletić bareheaded in a cape, right arm raised. It was unveiled on 1 October 1939, when the square was called Trg oslobođenja: Aleksandar Moč, president of Matica srpska and of the monument committee, opened the ceremony, and the prime minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia unveiled the figure. Taken off the square during the Second World War, it was put back in the autumn of 1944 at the urging of the historian Vasa Stajić, and in 1951 the sculptor Pavle Radovanović cut its inscription into a new pedestal. This archive's photographs show the unveiling crowd, the floodlit figure on a card dated 29 April 1941, and a woman posing before it.
- Date
- 1 October 1939
- Coordinates
- 45.25508, 19.84493
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 690 × 983 px
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