Neoclassical art

In the first half of the nineteenth century, in Sardinia, a sensitivity of strict neoclassical observance was established in the artistic field, which was manifested, in addition to the requests of the client, through the symbolic, cultural and ideological references that the works intended to communicate.

In the plastic field, the personalities of sculptors who reinterpret Roman and Canovian models emerge, such as the Piedmontese Felice Festa, the Sassari Andrea Galassi and the Alghero Antonio Moccia.

The adherence to certain currents of taste, as well as the quality of the craft, allows these artists to receive important commissions from members of the royal household.

Andrea Galassi performs the “Funeral Monument of Maurizio Giuseppe Duke of Monferrato” (1807), for the Alghero cathedral of Santa Maria, in which the statue of Devotion is identified with the island's piety for the brother of Carlo Felice, who died in 1799; just as full of allusions is the personification of Sardinia in the “Funeral Monument of Placido Benedetto Conte di Moriana” (1807) in the Sassari cathedral of San Nicola, dedicated to the other brother of the sovereign, who died in 1802.

A monumental work dedicated to the Savoy king is the “Statue of Carlo Felice”, cast in bronze in 1833 by Andrea Galassi (Sassari 1793-Rome 1845) and erected in Piazza Yenne in Cagliari.
Three years before that date, the Sassari sculptor had executed, with Antonio Moccia, two marble statues (respectively, the Madonna and Child and the Blessed Margaret of Savoy) for the church of the Great Mother of God in Turin, a pantheon of the Savoy dynasty.

In terms of painting, Giovanni Marghinotti (Cagliari 1798-1865) is Giovanni Marghinotti (Cagliari 1798-1865), who in 1830 painted “Carlo Felice, the munificent protector of Fine Arts in Sardinia”, a large allegorical canvas by the royal commission. The combination of classical and romantic in this work will constitute the key to the painter's production, leading him both to the execution of works on a sacred subject, for the religious client, and to the painting of history, corresponding to the taste of the secular client. The canvases for the Royal Palace in Turin date back to about ten years later.

These episodes, which underline the consonance of language with fashion and avant-garde trends at the time, also mark a reversal of the constant dynamics in Sardinia in previous centuries, which had seen the island as a passive subject of the flows of importation of works and artists from major Italian and Iberian centers.

Update

25/9/2023 - 16:12