Appunti sulla produzione giovanile di Pinuccio Sciola. Un inedito Crocifisso ligneo per la Basilica di San Saturnino a Cagliari = Notes on the youth production of Pinuccio Sciola. An unpublished wooden crucifix for the basilica of St. Saturnino in Cagliari

Rita Ladogana

First

2017-01-01

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Abstract

This contribution examines the wooden Crucifix made at the end of the seventies by the sculptor Pinuccio Sciola, best known internationally for the production of its “sound stones”. The artwork, so far unpublished, was acquired by the institution Polo museale regionale della Sardegna shortly before the artist’s death in May 2016 and it is intended to be exposed in the early Christian basilica of St. Saturnino, named after the patron saint of the city of Cagliari. Both an iconographic and stylistic analysis of the sculpture highlights specific connections to the medieval iconography of the painful Gothic crucifix, very common in Sardinia, that the sculptor reinterpreted in a modern way. The crucifix offered an opportunity for a unified critical review of Sciola’s activity during his juvenile training in the sixties and seventies, not much investigated by researchers and always touched upon marginally. It is a mainly figurative production, evidently influenced by the studies that the artist made mostly outside the island and impressed by what he saw through travel and visits to exhibitions.