Early medieval painting

Reconstructive hypothesis of the Necropolis of Sant'Andrea Priu. Image from Digital Resources Sardegna SVA

The picture of painting in Sardinia from the 4th to the 11th century is poor and not homogeneous, compared to other Mediterranean areas affected by the continuity of the local substrate, by the irradiation of Roman and Constantinopolitan artistic culture, by the insertion and reworking of formal modes in the various Western and Eastern spheres, both Christian and Islamic.
The borderline is represented by the panel paintings, none of which survive on the island. The clue, invoked several times in this regard, of the mention of a “ycona beatae Virginis” in the thirteenth-century inventory of silver, books and sacred furnishings of the Cagliari churches of Santa Cecilia, San Pietro and Santa Maria di Cluso, does not prove its ancient presence. In fact, there is nothing to prove that it was an “icon” of the early medieval period and of Eastern origin, since it can also be assumed that it was produced between the 12th and the first decades of the 13th century in Tuscany or in central Italy.
However, the absence of news does not authorize us to deny that Sardinia has also known, as is logical to assume, the existence of paintings on board, imported if not locally produced. The presence of a Marian icon is attested in the letter addressed in July 599 by Pope Gregory the Great to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari.
After accepting the Jewish community's protests for the “imaginem genetricis Dei dominique Nostro” placed on Easter Sunday, together with a cross and relics of his baptism, by this Peter - a new convert to Christianity - in the Cagliari synagogue, the pontiff orders the removal and return of the altar to legitimate worship.
From a quantitative point of view, the documentation does not record significant increases with regard to mosaic floors and painted plasters. Few lacerations or individual episodes survive, of strong problems and therefore still substantially unpublished or to be investigated with specific methodologies aimed at their historical, iconographic and technical-formal definition.
This applies, in particular, to the qualitative emergence of the paintings in the “Tomb of the Head”, a domus de Janas re-functionalized as a burial place and then as a Christian church, included in the necropolis of Sant'Andrea Priu in the countryside of Bonorva. The oldest ones in the intermediate chamber could be dated to the first quarter of the 6th century; those in the innermost chamber to the second half of the 8th century.

Update

27/5/2026 - 11:58