Ardauli, Church of Our Lady of the Guard

Ardauli is an agricultural village in the center of the territory historically known as “Barigadu”, which draws its environmental coherence both from the mountain-hilly landscape (especially in E), and from the settlements, characterized by the intense use of volcanic materials: the red stone locally called “trachyte” and the dark basaltic lava.
The work for the construction of the parish church, known with the title of Santa Maria della Guardia or to the Virgin of the Good Way, began in the third decade of the 17th century by the will of the rector Giossanto Cossu in fulfillment of the testamentary will of one of his predecessors, the rector Sebastiano Dessì, who died in 1610, who left all his assets for the erection of the new parish church.
The structure of the building follows the Sardinian-Catalan Gothic typology: a single-vaulted room turned into a barrel, divided and reinforced by sub-arches, which overlook four chapels on each side, six of which have a square plan and a barrel vault, two, the closest to the presbytery, with an octagonal plan with a ribbed cross roof. The capilla mayor, slightly raised, has a quadrangular plan and a ribbed and gemstone cross roof.
The façade, in carefully cut volcanic ashlars, is expanded horizontally due to the presence of two antewalls that serve as the base for the lions carved in the round.
On the cusp crowning, a large crimped rosette opens with a rich decoration that refers to contemporary examples such as the rural sanctuary of San Mauro in the countryside of Sorgono and the parish church of San Giacomo in Nughedu Santa Vittoria. Four pilasters mark the lower part of the smooth wall surface vibrated only slightly by a subtle pictoricism based on the sober differentiation of the tones of the trachitic stone but above all in the ripples of the reliefs carved with an incredible variety of motifs, in an effective synthesis of Romanesque, Gothic and Classical themes.
Even inside, the decoration of the members is particularly varied but, although there is no lack of references from the Renaissance repertoire (the notched frames) and Baroque (semicolumns grooved in the presbytery), the carving work of the woodpeckers active in Ardauli, due to the strong popular charge, shows, especially in the bases and capitals, a controversially “anti-classical” sensitivity and demonstrates a surprising affinity with the primitiveness of early medieval ornamentation.

History of studies Previously
studied by Renata Serra and Augusto Garau, the church is the subject of a brief fact sheet in the volume by Francesca Segni Pulvirenti and Aldo Sari on late Gothic and Renaissance architecture (1994).

Bibliography
C. Maltese, “Persistence of archaic motifs between the 16th and 18th centuries in Sardinia”, in Studi Sardi, XVII, 1959-61; R. Serra-A.
Garau, “The parish church of Ardauli. A unique 17th century Sardinian monument”, in Studi Sardi, XX, 1966-67;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance-influenced architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 80.