The Sardinia of the Savoy

Between 1714 and 1718, the island passed first under Austrian control, then under Piedmontese control. With the possession of Sardinia, the Savoy acquired the royal title. Late Baroque art persisted throughout the century, by architects and artists who come from the Italian continent.

In architecture, the personality of Giuseppe Viana emerges, who is best expressed in the dynamically baroque spatiality of the Carmine church in Oristano. In painting, that of Giacomo Altomonte, author of the refined frescoes in the sacristy of San Michele in Cagliari, emerges.

In the wooden statuary, the personality of a local sculptor, Giuseppe Antonio Lonis, author of highly appreciated devotional simulacra, emerges.

The first half of the nineteenth century also saw the spread of neoclassical art in Sardinia, whose greatest exponent was the sculptor Andrea Galassi. He will also succeed in the Turin artistic environment, working for the Church of the Great Mother of God in the Savoy capital.

While the sculptors embarked on the path of mass production, mainly dedicating themselves to funerary statuary, Giovanni Marghinotti stands out in painting, who over the course of the century became the interpreter of the main cultural orientations: from his neoclassical beginnings, celebrating the patronage of the Savoy, to romanticism, up to joining the folkloric vein, which led him to value, first in Sardinian art,

Sardinian customs and folk traditions.

Update

20/9/2023 - 09:51