488 Coroneo
stone-cutters. Therefore, workshops blossomed wherever new modes of con-
struction were grafted onto local building techniques, generating expertise
and original solutions. This situation also led to the emergence of profession-
als, whom local thirteenth-century century sources refer to as mastros de pedra
and de muru, and to whom must be added also the mastros de ludu, who worked
on less challenging and durable building projects made of sun-dried straw and
mud bricks—a tradition of poorer Mediterranean areas. On the other hand,
churches, which were meant to represent civic prestige and identity, and thus
to withstand the test of time, warranted stone construction. Those in charge of
designing and building churches applied the entire legacy of local and regional
knowledge, both with regard to technical expertise and the symbolic and li-
turgical content, which found expression in sculptural and painted ornament.
Relatively little survives of Sardinian wall painting from between the eleventh
and thirteenth centuries; surviving works include the frescoes of the church of
the most Holy Trinity of Saccargia in Codrongianos, of San Pietro in Galtellì,
San Nicola di Trullas in Semestene (Fig. 18.9), San Lorenzo in Silanus, and San
Simplicio in Olbia. The churches’ remaining visual communication is largely
relegated to the sculpted corbels supporting the small arches along the ends
of the outside walls. These corbels, which sometimes contain full iconographic
cycles, line up geometric, phytomorphic, zoomorphic, and anthropomorphic
motifs, always casually arranged but selected to convey the Christian message
of redemption and salvation.
4 Catalan Gothic Parish Churches
In 1297, Pope Boniface VIII created the Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae (Kingdom
of Sardinia and Corsica) from scratch. Disregarding the actual situation in
Sardinia, which was divided between the giudicato of Arborea (the only medi-
eval Sardinian kingdom left) and the lords of Pisa and Genoa, he enfeoffed the
island to James II, king of Aragon. In 1323, the Infante Alfonso landed on the
island, bound to lay siege to Pisan-controlled Cagliari. In 1326, the Aragonese
gained definitive control over the stronghold of Cagliari. Nevertheless, these
events ended the cultural cycle marked by the presence of Italy in Cagliari only.
Elsewhere on the island, the commercial and cultural routes dominated by Pisa
and Genoa only gradually gave way to other Mediterranean traditions, such as
those of Naples, Sicily, and Barcelona, or Italian Gothic to Catalan Gothic.
Cagliari and its churches soon experienced the political—and consequently
cultural—shift that set the conditions for the Catalanization of the island in the
fourteenth century. As early as the siege of the Pisan stronghold, an architect