Architecture in Sardinia from the 5th to the 16th Centuries 495
church of Santa Caterina in Sassari, marked the abandonment of the spa-
tial and decorative formulas of the Catalan Gothic for the severe mannerism
imposed by the order’s directives on architectural structures. The first phase
of work on the project was overseen by the Jesuit architect, Giovanni Maria
Bernardoni, but the building was later modified by Giovanni de Rosis so as to
adhere more closely to the dictates of Herrerian classicism. It was the local
workers, however, who introduced the most significant variations on the im-
ported canons by carrying out roofing and decorative solutions that continued
the late Gothic tradition, yet without affecting the generally late Mannerist
character of the final result. Indeed, a thoroughly Renaissance sense of spatial-
ity and decorum is apparent only in the church of Sant’Agostino in Cagliari,
with its dome and centralized cruciform plan, begun between 1577 and 1580, in
the context of the classically oriented cultural politics of Philip II.
All the same, the subsequent activity of the craftsmen at the worksite of
Sant’Agostino in Cagliari once again turned not towards innovations that
bore the mark of the Renaissance, but rather towards workshops rooted in
the Gothic tradition. This led to a revival of ashlar coffers with rosettes and
diamond-cut rustication in other buildings in Cagliari, such as the church
of the Carmine (destroyed) and the Chapel of the Rosary in San Domenico
(1580–1598). The fluctuation in taste evident in ecclesiastical architecture is
also apparent in private construction. In the second half of the sixteenth cen-
tury, the Casa Doria in Alghero was built with traditional techniques, with
window balanced frames, inflected arches, and geometric ornamentation of a
late Gothic stamp. By contrast, in Sassari, classicist architectural models find a
full and coherent explanation in the ornamental details of the doors and win-
dows drawn from Serlio’s treatise and applied to the Manca palace in Usini,
expanded in 1577.
The third category of architectural monuments is pronouncedly Baroque.
This style was both an explicit choice on the part of patrons, and the logical
conclusion of a local tradition that favored a fusion of exuberant Baroque
décor with an analogous predilection for the ornate, which defined the late
Gothic idiom. The first example of this kind of syncretic tendency, which led
to extremely original and interesting results, is the so-called “Sanctuary of
Martyrs” crypt. This semi-subterranean space, beneath the presbytery of the
cathedral of Santa Maria in Cagliari, was completed by 1618 at the behest of
Archbishop Francisco Desquivel. It was built in the cultural climate of the
Counter Reformation, and meant to house the relics of the “holy bodies” of
the church of Cagliari, which had been recovered in the early seventeenth cen-
tury through archeological excavations aimed at confirming the primacy of the
city’s view over that of Turri.