The Brothers of the Croatian Dragon Society recently published a scientific monograph by Željko Heimer, Milan Sunko – World-renowned Heraldic Artist, as the eighteenth book in the Acta et studia draconica series, which the Society reactivates with this book after a long hiatus. The name of this now forgotten painter was well known in the world of heraldry and art at the end of the 19th century, and in Zagreb it remained in the minds of many for almost two decades after the untimely death of this world-famous creator of heraldic depictions, genealogical trees, and ex libris book marks, whose clients were many of the courts of the rulers and nobles of that time in Europe and even on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The author of the book concluded that Sunko was a well-known “household” name among the people of Zagreb even at the time when the Society launched an international campaign to save his grave, that is, to transfer his remains to a suitable grave, since the city fathers planned to renovate a part of the Mirogoj cemetery for the poor, where Sunko was originally buried in 1891. That the people of Zagreb did not forget Milan Sunko after his death is also shown by a short news item published in the Zagreb German-language newspaper Agramer Zeitung, which reported on January 3, 1901 that “Mr. M. Sunko, brother of the late painter Milan Sunko, was hired as the director of the modernized Urania cinema during the Christmas holidays.” The mentioned “M. Sunko” would therefore be the lawyer Miroslav Sunko, whom the journalist thus identifies to his readers in relation to his better-known, but prematurely deceased brother Milan.

Rediscovering heraldry

The changes that followed in the turbulent 20th century led to heraldry becoming first neglected in the interwar kingdom, dominated by Serbs, who did not have a strong heraldic tradition, and then ideologically odious as a feature of backward social systems from the perspective of the revolutionary regime of socialist Yugoslavia. Sunko’s grave, to which he was transferred by the Dragons in 1910, was again neglected, and the artist’s remains were exhumed again in 1930 and transferred to a common ossuary in Mirogoj, central Zagreb cemetery, where they still lie today.

Although some of Sunko’s works are preserved in Zagreb museums and galleries, most of which were taken (confiscated) from the rich collection and the Draconian Museum of the Brothers of the Croatian Dragon Society after its ban in 1946, only those familiar with lesser-known painters and the “dark” corners of Croatian art history know about him. However, his mention and significance in Croatian heraldry remained completely unrecorded in any written work, until the author’s efforts to rediscover him, thus his brilliant heraldic works remained unknown to the contemporary Croatian heraldic, as well as the wider community.

Published by Brothers of Croatian Dragon Society
(Series Acta et studia draconica, Vol. 18), 2024.

Croatian painter and draftsman, heraldic artist, architect and collector Milan Sunko was born on December 5, 1860 in Zidani Most (Steinbrück) in Styria, present-day Slovenia, into a large family as the tenth child out of thirteen. His father was a wholesaler, and the family soon moved from his birthplace to Sisak. He attended elementary school in nearby Petrinja, and completed his secondary education in Rijeka. As a result of chickenpox, he was partially deaf. Although he had been attracted to archaeology (numismatics) from an early age, in 1875 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, initially in the class of architect Johann Petschnigg, and then in the class of painter Hans Klein. Due to the financial problems that affected his family, he began to very successfully draw and paint coats of arms and other artistic commissions. He first worked for the St. Norbert (St. Norbertus) art printing house in Vienna. After that, he continued to work as a freelance artist. He painted notable watercolors and ink drawings, landscapes and folk costumes. He also made artistic ex libris for bibliophiles throughout Europe. He was accepted as a regular member of what was probably the most respected and exclusive heraldic society at the time, the Imperial Royal Heraldic Society “Adler” (K. k. heraldische Gesellschaft “Adler”) in Vienna on 19 January 1887, and was also a corresponding member of the French Heraldic Council (Conseil héraldique de France). His network of collaborators, clients and commissioners included the greatest heraldic names of the time, and in heraldic literature and periodicals his name is mentioned alongside the much more famous Viennese heraldists Hugo Gerard Ströhl and Ernest Krahl, for example in monographs of German ex libris, published in 1890 in Berlin and 1901 in Stuttgart, and in an English translation in New York the same year. His best ex-libris-heraldic work is cited as a round collotype for Joseph Leidinger, a high-ranking Viennese court official. The ink and pen watercolor drawing for this work is kept in the National Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb.

Collaboration with famous heraldists

Milan Sunko: Drawing for ex libris of Joseph Leidinger, water color and ink on paper, 1886. (MGP-608, NMMU Zagreb)

In Vienna, he collaborated with the esteemed heraldist Heinrich Kadich, illustrating his contributions to the monthly magazine of the society “Adler”, and then also in his monumental coat of arms of the Moravian nobility in the most important heraldic edition of that time, Siebmachers großes und allgemeines Wappenbuch. Heraldic periodicals of the time unusually warmly praised Sunko’s illustrations for Kadich’s coat of arms.

He was brought to Zagreb and supported by Ivan pl. Bojničić Kninski, a prominent Croatian heraldist and director of the National Archives, who was working on the coat of arms of the nobility of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, similar to the aforementioned Kadich’s Moravian project, but unfortunately Sunko’s premature death prevented him from participating in it – Bojničić began publishing the first parts of his coat of arms in Siebmacher’s edition only five or six years after Sunko’s death. Arriving in Zagreb, Sunko met Emilio Laszowski Szeliga, who had just graduated law and taken a job at the National Archives. Apparently, the ten years older painter Sunko left a strong impression on Laszowski. If Sunko’s contribution to the Croatian heraldic heritage was measured only through the prism of his influence on the heraldic oeuvre of these two giants of Croatian heraldry (Bojničić and Laszowski), that would be enough to regularly mention him with great respect.

Sunko’s illustrations also found a place in the encyclopedic edition Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild (Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in words and pictures) in vol. 24, which is dedicated to Croatia and Slavonia, and was printed in Vienna in 1902 (K. K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Wien). At the International Economic and Forestry Jubilee Exhibition of the Croatian-Slavonic Economic Society in Zagreb, which was held in 1891, he presented himself with 16 watercolors and prints, among which were heraldic works, and received an honorary diploma. There he also exhibited the prepared cover for Bojničić’s Coat of Arms of the Croatian-Slavonic Nobility, which was ultimately not used, and which was inherited from the director of the archives by his daughter Vjera Bojničić Zamola, also a famous heraldic artist, and which she donated to the Draconian Museum of the Brothers of the Croatian Dragon Society in the Old City of Ozalj in the 1930s. From there, unfortunately, no further trace of this display was lost after its confiscation.

Posthumously, his works were exhibited at the Millennium Exhibition in Budapest (1896), then at the exhibition of Yugoslav and Czechoslovak graphic artists in Osijek (1921), and at the exhibition IV. Zagreb Circle. Crnčić – Kovačević – Tišov 1890‒1910. in Zagreb (1934), and at the Exhibition of Vukovar Portraits of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Vukovar (1961).

Milan Sunko died in Zagreb on 9 March 1891 from the effects of tuberculosis. The Croatian provincial government, through the head of the Department of Worship and Education Izidor Kršnjavi, modestly supported him financially in the last period of his life. His death was recorded by heraldic societies throughout Europe in their journals, and an extensive obituary was published in the Viennese Jahrbuch der K. k. heraldischen Gesellschaft „Adler“.

Shortly after the founding of the Draconian Society, Emilij Laszowski, at the end of 1906, initiated the idea of ​​providing Milan Sunko with a suitable grave. For this purpose, heraldic experts and Sunko’s admirers around the world and in Croatia, as well as his family, were contacted. His sister, with whom Milan was particularly close, Ana Iskra, the mother of the Croatian writer and pedagogue Štefanija Iskra, later married to Izidor Kršnjavi. Milan’s cousin is the famous architect Dionis Sunko, whose most famous work is perhaps the Zagreb Esplanade Hotel, but also many buildings in Zagreb’s Lower Town.

With this monograph, Družba once again shows that it can rescue significant and famous people from Croatian history from oblivion, and the author restores the deserved place to a forgotten figure of Croatian heraldic heritage as a significant part of the overall Croatian heritage.

(Taken from the journal Vijenac: Literary magazine for arts, culture and science, Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, XXXII (2024) 791, 4 July 2024)