Sassari, Sant'Andrea Church

The church is within the historic walls of the city.
The church of Sant'Andrea, seat of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, was built by the will of the doctor of Corsican origin Andrea Vico Guidoni, who died in 1648. The factory, started after the death of the client, lasted for more than fifty years, due to the various interruptions due to the plague that hit the city in 1652 and a dispute between 1656 and 1658 between the brotherhood and the Turritan chapter, which had forfeited the assets of Vico Guidoni destined for work, completed in the last decade of the seventeenth century.
In the absence of documentary sources, it is believed that the façade, built at the same time as the seventeenth-century layout, was reformed in the last years of the 18th century according to a Rococo style by workers linked to the Piedmontese architect Giuseppe Viana.
The single-aisled classroom is barreled and divided into three unequal spans by Doric semipillars that, crossing the overhanging frame decorated with classical baccellature and sheep, extend into the subtarches. In the walls of the second and third bays, four niches have been carved into which are placed stucco altars in Baroque style. The apse, lower and narrower than the nave, has a quadrangular plan. In the 19th century, the shell stucco decoration was inserted into the apse basin and the main altar and the marble balustrade were built; the latter, with a semicircular shape, invades part of the last span of the room, in delimiting the presbyterial area. The tombstone of the founder is walled up in the right wall of the presbytery.
The façade is divided into two orders connected by large swirls surmounted by small sailing bell towers with a triangular tympanum. A doubled and strongly projecting marcapiano frame with a lower frieze with triglyphs and metopes separates them. The lower order is divided into three mirrors with double Tuscan pilasters on the base; in the central mirror, the portal opens, framed by Doric columns and surmounted by an lintel with a triglyph frieze on which the tympanum broken at a double inflection rests, inside which a small newsstand with an arched and curved niche is inserted. In the side mirrors there are three overlapping blind openings: a quadrangular portal with a broken tympanum with a double inflection concluded by a volute and with a central newsstand, a curved and contoured niche, a quadrangular window whose frame forms four squares on the sides. In the second order, the ternary rhythm is repeated with the serliana, surmounted by a triangular tympanum with two lateral volutes that reproduce those of the façade, while the diamond-cut rectangles that adorn the central pilasters are a reflection of the motif present in the pseudo newsstands of the blind side portals. The façade is concluded by the nuisance consisting of a triangular tympanum with conspicuous shelves that hold the frame.

History of studies
The church is the subject of a brief summary in Salvatore Naitza's volume on late seventeenth-century and purist architecture (1992).

Bibliography
V. Angius, entry “Sassari”, in G. Casalis, Historical, Statistical and Commercial Geographical Dictionary of the States by H.M. the King of Sardinia, XIX, Turin, G. Maspero, 1849, pp. 71-375;
E. Costa, Sassari, Sassari, 1937;
A. Marcellino, La Cofadria de Sant'Andreu sub Invocassiò del Sassari, 1938; V. Mossa, Sassari Architectures, Sassari, Gallizzi, 1965; V. Mossa, From the Gothic to the Gothic Baroque in Sardinia, Sassari 1982; S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 32;
M. Porcu Gaias, Sassari. Architectural and urban history from its origins to the 17th century, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1996;
W. Paris, Sassari, the churches. Artistic, religious and historical itineraries, Sassari 1997;
A. Sari, The Church in the Archdiocese of Sassari, series “Churches and Sacred Art in Sardinia”, Sestu, 2003.