San Gavino Monreale, Church of San Gavino

Located in the center of the Campidano plain, at an equal distance from the cities of Cagliari and Oristano, San Gavino Monreale has traces of settlements starting from the Nuragic Age and was of strategic importance in the Middle Ages, when it was located on the border between the courts of Cagliari and Arborea. Today it is important for population, connected to the exploitation of mineral resources.
The church of San Gavino Monreale has come to us heavily modified compared to the original Gothic structures, which probably date back to the 14th century.
The single-basement classroom has plastered walls and a ceiling, originally wooden, made of masonry. The only part of the fourteenth-century structure to have been saved is the apse, made of limestone and volcanic, with a square plan and with an arched window, originally a mullioned window.
On the wall of the presbytery there is an ashlar engraved with the date 1347, while on the other side the date 1388 is painted, in an inscription traced on a thin layer of plaster. Between the two dates, it is possible to identify the period of time in which the church was built.
The ribbed cross vaults of the apse are supported by four shelves sculpted with anthropomorphic figures, in which the judges Mariano IV and Ugone III de Bas-Serra, rulers of Arborea, and Eleonora d'Arborea (daughter of Mariano IV) with her husband Brancaleone Doria, have been identified.

History of studies
There are numerous contributions on the church of San Gavino, starting with the entry of Vittorio Angius (1849) in the Casalis “Dictionary”, to the quotations of Dionigi Scano, in 1907, and Raffaello Delogu in 1953. More recent is the 1984 article by Francesco Cesare Casula, entitled “The discovery of the stone busts of the kings or judges of Arborea: Mariano IV, Ugone III, Eleonora with Brancaleone Doria”, followed by the synthetic monograph edited by Giuseppe Spiga, in 1992. From 1993 he published an exhaustive profile in Roberto Coroneo's volume “Romanesque Architecture from the Mid-Thousand to the Early 1900".

Bibliography
V. Angius, “San Gavino”, in G. Casalis Historical and Statistical-Commercial Geographical Dictionary of the States of His Excellency the King of Sardinia, XVIII, Turin, G. Maspero, 1849, pp. 245-246;
D. Scano, History of art in Sardinia from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, Cagliari-Sassari, Montorsi, 1907, p. 326;
R. Delogu, The Architecture of the Middle Ages in Sardinia, Rome, The State Library, 1953, pp. 223-224; F.C. Casula, “The discovery of stone busts of the kings or judges of Arborea: Mariano IV, Ugone III, Eleonora with Brancaleone Doria”, in Middle Ages essays and reviews, 9, 1984, pp. 9-28;
D. Salvi, “The excavation in the church of San Gavino, in San Gavino Monreale”, in Notebooks of the Archaeological Superintendence for the Provinces of Cagliari and Oristano, 8, 1991, pp. 223-237;
G. Spiga, Guide to the “Pantheon” of the Arborea in San Gavino Monreale, Sassari, Carlo Delfino, 1992; R. Coroneo, Romanesque architecture from the middle of the thousand to the Primo '300, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993, sheet 170; R. Coroneo, Romanesque churches of Sardinia. Tourist-cultural itineraries, Cagliari, AV, 2005, pp. 82-83.