On the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the birth of the penultimate Bosnian queen, Katarina Kosaca Kotromanic (1425-1478), the wife of King Stjepan Tomas, the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is organizing the lecture “The Queen’s Portraits in Works of Art”.
The lecture will be tomorrow, November 27th, 2025, and is dedicated to the many years of research on the figure of Queen Katarina Vukcic Kosaca Kotromanic, on which art historian Husein Mekanovic worked devotedly.
The Bosnian queen Katarina Kosaca Kotromanic (1425-1478) spent the last 12 years of her life mainly in Rome, where she actively participated in the public life of the eternal city. Unfortunately, the works of painters and other visual artists that could testify to her activities did not attract particular attention from researchers. This year marks 600 years since the birth of Queen Katarina, and on that occasion, a lecture is being held at which valuable works of art will be presented that have been preserved in Rome and in other parts of the Apennine Peninsula, where Queen Katarina stayed or maintained contacts with their highest political representatives, the National Museum of BiH states.
Husein Sejko Mekanovic was born in 1972 in the village of Elezovici near Velika Kladusa. At the Faculty of Philosophy in Ljubljana, he studied art history and sociology, where in 2001 he obtained the title of graduated art historian and professor of sociology.
For more than 20 years, he dedicated his scientific work to the history of medieval art, and some of the narrowest topics he dealt with are: art in Bosnia in the time of Ban Kulin, coats of arms, seals and money of King Tvrtko I Kotromanic, the name of Bobovac and Bobovac Gothic, the Bobovac bronze cauldron, medieval churches of St. Martin in northwestern Bosnia, and recently the altars of the Counts of Celje in the royal chapel of Sutjeska.
In addition, for decades, he has been working intensively on researching the portraits of the penultimate Bosnian queen, Katarina Kosaca Kotromanic, the wife of King Stjepan Tomas. He has published a larger number of works and actively participated in professional gatherings in BiH and abroad. Besides Bobovac and Queen Katarina, he is also active in researching local history and events from the past of the Velika Kladusa municipality, and he works on translating from the Slovenian language, the National Museum of BiH states in the announcement.
