About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Neo4j in Action is captioned a “Man from Šibenik, Dalmatia, Croatia.” The illustration is taken from a reproduction of an album of Croatian traditional costumes from the mid-nineteenth century by Nikola Arsenovic, published by the Ethnographic Museum in Split, Croatia, in 2003. The illustrations were obtained from a helpful librarian at the Ethnographic Museum in Split, itself situated in the Roman core of the medieval center of the town: the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace from around AD 304. The book includes finely colored illustrations of figures from different regions of Croatia, accompanied by descriptions of the costumes and of everyday life.

Šibenik, unlike other cities along the Adriatic coast which were established by Greeks, Illyrians, and Romans, was founded by Croats. It is the oldest native Croatian town on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. The figure on the cover is wearing red woolen pants and a red woolen jacket over a black vest, all richly embroidered in the blue and green colors typical for this region.