Gothic-Catalan architecture

The Gothic-Catalan construction type, developed in Catalonia, was introduced to Sardinia in the 14th century by the Aragonese during the military conquest of the island. For the erection of the churches, it included a single room, sometimes with side chapels carved between the buttresses, quadrangular or polygonal presbyters whose number of sides is equal to the number of bays in the room.

The cover of the latter could be wooden sloping on ogival diaphragm arches or sometimes a cross vaulted ribbed by slender ribs. The roof of the apse and the side chapels, on the other hand, is always vaulted with a ribbed cross and closed by a pendulous gem bearing the figuration of the Madonna and Child, of the Christ or of the patron saint of the church.

This type finds its first example in Sardinia in the sanctuary of Bonaria in Cagliari, built between 1324 and 1325 (the year of the siege of the Pisan Castle) by Catalan workers who arrived in Sardinia in 1323 following the army led by the infant Alfonso of Aragon for the territorial conquest of the “Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae”.

From the prototype of the Sanctuary of Bonaria, the building type of Iberian Gothic style spread to the island - according to the central-periphery development model and like other aspects of Catalan-Aragonese culture - the type of construction of Iberian Gothic style, which continued to be adopted in Sardinia until the end of the sixteenth century, accompanied by the development of a Sardinian-Hispanic language that persisted until the 17th century. Emblematic monuments are in the south the numerous Campidanese parishes (of Assemini, Sestu, Settimo San Pietro, etc.) modeled after the San Giacomo of Cagliari; in the north, the church of San Giorgio di Perugas and the parish churches of Padria, Thiesi, Cossoine and Pozzomaggiore.

Starting from the mid-16th century, the parish churches of Meilogu were built or restored according to Gothic-Catalan methods, more faithful to the models produced by the church of Santa Giulia di Padria in 1520. The homogeneity of these factories would suggest a group of local operators active for more than a century, but whose origin has not yet been ascertained. However, the long lifespan of the factories, which ended up also housing elements of the new Renaissance language, makes these buildings very representative of that symbiosis of old and new, which with a term mediated from Castilian is called “Plateresque”.

Update

10/9/2023 - 15:44