Thiesi, Church of Santa Vittoria

The town, with its pastoral vocation, is on a slightly sloped limestone plateau and is one of the most important centers of the Meilogu cheese industry. Almost triangular in shape, it has a road fabric with very tight meshes.
The parish church of Thiesi was rebuilt in late Gothic forms but with the classicist motifs that made their appearance in the architecture of the island in the last quarter of the 16th century.
The mutilated plaque on the outer wall of the fourth chapel, on the N side of the building, could indicate the date of completion of the church, reported as 1590 in the nineteenth-century reports of the parish priests.
The building, like San Giorgio di Pozzomaggiore, which represents its model, has a cusped façade, closed between the buttress and the bell tower with a square base, starting from a frame with a thin undulating branch and geometric decorations.
The beautiful portal, with a round arch and a ring adorned with foliage with a fjord, is flanked by columns with a capital that is also shaped like a flower.
The conspicuous architrave is sculpted with arched shrines that alternate between smooth and spiral columns that welcome, in the center, like a predella of Catalan “retaule”, the Christ on the column, accompanied by a series of saints, including the Virgin, Saints Peter and Paul, Saint Victoria and Saint James, recognizable by the cape and pilgrim's hat.
In line with the portal, the large rose window with a molded ring, radiates with flat and spiral rods that form a delicate tunnel with rounds and petals.
The frame of the capanna crowning has a typically Renaissance frieze with astragals and strips, while the base of the bell tower includes a panel with the effigy of the Crucifix taken from the one called Nicodemus in Oristano, widely spread in Sardinia in the mid-sixteenth century.
The nave, in plastered stone with only visible members, is divided into four bays facing a gemmed cross with pointed arches. The apse has radial ribs with buttresses at the top, as in the Santa Giulia di Padria and in the Alghero prototype of the chapel of the Stimmate of Saint Francis, and has the effigy of the patron saint in the pendulous gem.

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
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance-influenced architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 42.