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The Cathedral of St. James (Croatian: Katedrala sv. Jakova) in Šibenik, Croatia is a triple-nave basilica with three apses and a dome (32 m high inside) in the city of Šibenik, Croatia. It is the church of the Catholic Church in Croatia, and the see of the Šibenik diocese. It is also the most important architectural monument of the Renaissance in the entire country. Since 2000, the Cathedral has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is often mistakenly known as “St Jacob’s”, because Croatian, like many other languages, uses the same name for both “James” and “Jacob”. It is dedicated to Saint James the Greater.
The building of the church was initiated in 1402, though plans on its construction had already begun in 1298, when Šibenik became a municipality. The actual work to transform the older Romanesque cathedral began in 1431. Built entirely of stone (limestone from a nearby stone quarry and marble from the island of Brač), it was completed in three phases, from 1433 to 1441, when the Grand City Council entrusted the work to local and Italian masters Francesco di Giacomo, Lorenzo Pincino, Pier Paolo Bussato, Andrija Budčić, Grubiš Šlafčić, Bonino da Milano, and Giorgio da Sebenico (Juraj Dalmatinac).
Initially, it was conceived as a simple church. With tremendous skill, Giorgio da Sebenico combined architectural and decorative elements to create a unified entity. He constructed the western main portal, the northern portal (The Lion Gate) and the first chapel. The motif of the Lion Gate are Adam and Eve standing on two lions, which is also seen at the Trogir Cathedral, but here Adam and Eve are on columns over the lions.
This gate as a side entrance forms an artistic trinity with the abbey of San Leonardo di Siponto. Furthermore, the angels on the ceiling of Hagia Sophia are on the ceiling of the cathedral of San Marco in Venice, where are the horses of the Hippodrome of Constantinople, and on the ceiling of the Trogir cathedral, too. Over the Lion Gate of the Šibenik cathedral are the coat of arms of two bishops and of the procurator of the church of Saint Saviour in Šibenik.
Between 1475 and 1505 the work was overseen by Tuscan master Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino (Nicola Firentinac), from the Donatello school of sculpture who developed as a sculptor and builder in Dalmatia. He continued the building in the Tuscan Renaissance style, completing the extensive galleries, building the vault in the central nave, the outer sculptures of St. Michael, St. James and St. Mark.
The drawing of this sculpture of St. Michael became also the coat of arms of the city of Šibenik, because in the 12th century the justiciar of Monte Sant’Angelo, who was from Siponto, was sent by Pope Alexander III as a notifier to Šibenik. According to the Longobard writer Pavlo Đakon from the year 642, Croats have many ships under the city of Siponto.
Inside the cathedral there are four large, evenly matched columns on which the dome rests. The builder decorated the capitals and came to arrangements with the nobles who were to finance the building of chapels, on condition that they would be free to choose their own builders.In the first chapel on the right-side, there is the sarcophagus of the bishop, humanist and writer Juraj Šižgorić (1420-1509) which is the work of Andrija Aleši based on a design by Juraj Dalmatinac.
Aleši also created the statue of St. Elijah which stands behind the bishop’s throne. On the left-hand side is the sarcophagus of Bishop Ivan Štafilič, during whose life the cathedral was completed. Beneath the choir there are the graves of two bishops, which reliefs: on the right Bishop Calegari and on the left, Bishop Spingarola. The latter is the work of the local artist Antun Nogulovič.
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