Aragonese and Spanish

Aragonese age

In 1323, the Infante Alfonso of Aragon landed in Sardinia to materialize the act of infidelity wanted by Pope Boniface VIII in favor of James II of Aragon, with the creation in 1297 of the “Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae” and its concession to the Aragonese sovereign.
First the city of Villa di Chiesa (Iglesias), then in 1326 the Castle of Cagliari were conquered at the expense of the Pisans.

A nucleus of resistance to the conquest of the island is made up of the Pisan-Genoese lords of the Doria and Malaspina families and the magistrate of Arborea, with whom Aragon waged a long war, from which it emerged victorious only in 1410.

From this moment on, the Iberian Peninsula will constitute the main reference point for the island, in particular Catalonia, both from a political and administrative point of view (in fact, the main Catalan institutions are imported into Sardinia) and from a cultural point of view. But a sharp break with Italian culture takes place only in Cagliari, while in the Giudicato Arborense and in the rest of the island the change is more gradual.

In 1479, the sovereign Ferdinand II (1479-1516) enacted a series of institutional reforms aimed at transforming the Crown of Spain into a great European state. His plan for cultural homogenization also includes the promotion of new factories that were to testify to the new national unity through monumentality and exorative wealth. In this way, an artistic taste, called the Catholic Monarchs, is configured in which Gothic, Mudéjar and Renaissance stylistic features merge.

In Sardinia, however, there is no immediate reflection of the new artistic and cultural policy: Gothic in its island meaning continued at least until the 17th century to characterize both religious and civil architecture, coexisting, from the end of the sixteenth century, with the new Renaissance ideology imported by the Society of Jesus (on the island since 1559) and by military engineers and in line with the artistic directives of Philip II (1556-1598). In fact, with the heir of Charles V, the process of Hispanization of the island was finally completed: on an artistic level, with the so-called Plateresque style, there was a formal synthesis - with the so-called Plateresque style - between Gothic and classicist languages, which characterized local architecture until the end of the 17th century.