The end of the 18th century

Milis, Palazzo Boyl. Foto di Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, da sardegna DigitalLibrary

Contemporary historiography is inclined to believe that the first signs of the processes of change that will lead to the consolidation of the modern autonomy of Sardinia can be found in the phenomena of lively ferment that affected the island in the last years of the 18th century, in particular in the three-year period 1793-96.

In fact, it is at this historic moment that the urban bourgeoisie, the “Popolaccio”, the “prinzipales” of the countryside and the peasant masses begin to gain public visibility.

Among the events of those years, the bombing of Cagliari by the French certainly remains imprinted in the Sardinian collective imagination; their attempt to occupy the island, which failed due to the strenuous defense opposed by the militiamen and local volunteers in February 1793; the five-point manifesto aimed at claiming the equal role of the political-institutional organs (Statements and Royal Audience) of the “Regnum Sardiniae” in the state structure, and to reject the “colonial” relationship imposed with the states of the mainland, and to reject the imposed “colonial” relationship with the mainland states From the government Savoy; the indignation following the negative response to the demands brought to Turin by the legitimate representatives of the kingdom, the first voices of the Statements, ignored during the discussion phase and even as the bearers of the nation's demands; the Cagliari uprising of April 28, 1794, the arrest and subsequent expulsion of the viceroy and Piedmontese officials; the anti-feudal riots in the Logudoro, culminating in the failed attempt at republican government by Giovanni Maria Angioy in March-June 1796.

The only such event, however, to which we find explicit reference in eighteenth-century artistic representations is that relating to the victory brought back by the Sardinians over the French.

The reasons for this apparent oblivion of the other historical events of those years must be found in what followed them: the substantial failure of insurrectional attempts and the restoration of the situation that those events had tried to subvert had also led to a decline in the historiographic interest in those events and in the characters who had been protagonists such as Giovanni Maria Angioy, interrupted only in 1857 with the work of Sulis.

Only in the last decades of the nineteenth century did those events find pictorial celebration in the works of Sciuti and Bruschi, respectively for the palaces of the Province of Sassari and Cagliari.

Update

25/9/2023 - 17:20