Pozzomaggiore, Church of San Giorgio

The village of Pozzomaggiore is located on a basaltic plateau with pastures, dotted with nuraghi.
The parish church of San Giorgio was built between the fourth and fifth decades of the sixteenth century. The oldest date inside the church is that of 1551, shown on the tombstone of Elena de Leda.
As with the church of Santa Giulia di Padria (1520), which constitutes its immediate reference, the iconographic model seems to be the Saint Francis of Alghero, which reproduces the division of the classroom into five rectangular bays turned like a ribbed cross with a pendulous gem. But unlike Alghero, the presbytery is squared according to the Sardinian-Catalan typology.
The relations with Alghero are justified because Pozzomaggiore was from 1443 to 1578 a fief of the de Ferrera family of Alghero.
The main chapel is covered with a star vault consisting of sixteen cords and five pendulous gems. On the sides of the bays, divided by transverse pointed arches on pillars, barrel-vaulted chapels open between the buttresses, in later times, barrel-vaulted chapels with arches leading to the round of access.
The wall is made of ashlars only in the apse, while for the rest the vaults and walls are in plastered stone with visible members.
The façade, in sandstone ashlars, has diagonal buttresses that form the plane of the façade, to which they connect with two volutes, a sort of fifth, scenographically highlighted by the later staircase that highlights the original difference in altitude. It is divided into two orders by a frame adorned with a vine branch. Under the horizontal frame, a refined intertwining of inflected arches, characteristic of the flowery Gothic, unfolds, which, like a triplet, revolves in the buttresses.
The beautiful portal, with thin semicolumns between pinnacles, a round arch with fan-worked ashlars, is adorned with cats and a central flower.

History of studies
The church is the subject of a brief summary in the volume by Francesca Segni Pulvirenti and Aldo Sari on late Gothic and Renaissance architecture (1994).

Bibliography by
C. Maltese-R. Serra, “Episodes of an Anticlassical Civilization”, in Sardinia, Venice, 1969;
V. Mossa, From Gothic to Baroque in Sardinia, Sassari, 1982;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance Architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 39.