Sardinian art in a united Italy

Portrait of Umberto I - Giuseppe Sartorio (1854-1922 ca.). Photo by Giovanni Pintori, from Catalogo BBCC RAS

Starting in the mid-19th century, the slow process of constructing an art aimed at expressing the peculiarities of Sardinian culture within a united Italy began.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the island lacked important artistic personalities. The local market is dominated by imported artists and works. In the field of sculpture, some families of marble workers from Carrarese or from other parts of the peninsula keep the field, who set up shop in Sardinia and are busy churning out statues, busts and monuments, mostly for cemeteries, for Cagliari, Sassari and other island centers. These are generally modest artists, aligned with the national average taste of classicist or verist stamp, with some romantic veining.

The workshop of Giuseppe Sartorio from Vercelli (Boccioleto Valsesia 1854-1922) emerges above the others, whose frantic production covers almost the entire island territory. Among other things, Sartorio was entrusted with the construction of two important commemorative monuments, Iglesias that of the parliamentarian Quintino Sella, promoter of mining activity in Sardinia (1885), to Sassari that of Vittorio Emanuele II (1892-99): episodes, both, indicative of the effort of island culture to visually signal the entry of Sardinia into the Italian national structure.

However, the historic specificity of the island is granted the Monument to Eleonora d'Arborea in the homonymous square in Oristano, built in 1875-77 by Ulisse Cambi and Mariano Falcini. After all, Sardinia will be at the center (even if within a framework celebrating the role of the House of Savoy) of the iconographic program of the frescoed decoration of the council rooms of the provincial palaces of Sassari and Cagliari, entrusted the first to Giuseppe Sciuti from Catania (1878-82) and the second to the Perugian Domenico Bruschi (1893-96). Between timeless allegories of power (The Sardinia that holds the Savoy shield, in Cagliari) and evocations of epic moments in local history (Bruschi's “Eleonora d'Arborea promulgates the Letter of Logu”, and “Giommaria Angioy's triumphal entry into Sassari”, by Sciuti), the last significant chapter of the nineteenth-century attempt to integrate the island into the national framework takes place.

Update

23/6/2026 - 13:13