Late Baroque architecture

The entire course of the 18th century was characterized by the activity of Piedmontese architects and military engineers, who accelerated sacred and civil construction in a baroque sense, especially in the most important urban centers, with a marked absorption of cultural models with an Italian imprint.

In 1722, Antonio Felice De Vincenti edited the drawings for the new Basilica of Bonaria in Cagliari, whose wooden model reveals references to the work of Guarino Guarini and Filippo Juvarra. From the design of this façade, never built, those of other Sardinian churches will derive, including the parish church of Our Lady of Grace in Sanluri, built between 1781 and 1786 on a design by Carlo Maino and Antonio Ignazio Carta. In the Oristano area, various country portals show similar late-baroque manners, the best known of which is called “di Vitu Sotto” (post 1780).

A large number of other microbuilding interventions, including public fountains, and fortification works are being started in the major cities and smaller towns of Sardinia, which are beginning to take on an urban face substantially similar to today's, as far as they remain consistent in the fabric of historic areas.

The late Baroque language, new not so much in its classification as in the Italian and no longer Iberian referent, is expressed in complete and stylistically resolved ways in the complex (church and monastery) of the Carmine of Oristano, designed in 1776 by the Piedmontese Giuseppe Viana. The same architect owes the factory, starting in 1785 but extended over a long time, of the church of Sant'Anna in the Stampace district of Cagliari.

Trends linked to technical-constructive traditions of Iberian descent, however, persist in the centers of the interior, with interesting and original results, especially in the Carmine church and convent in Bosa (1779), in the church of the Madonna della Salute in Pozzomaggiore (1790) and in the country sanctuary of Our Lady of Bonu Ighinu in Mara (1797), characterized by the decorative intervention of local workers linked to the traditional repertoire and still in the wake of the “woodpeckers”.

Update

25/9/2023 - 17:13