A Byzantine Island? Historiographical Issues in (Art)Historical Studies on Early Medieval Sardinia (6th-11th century)
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Art-historical studies on early medieval Sardinia have often been conditioned by a historiographical tradition that read the island’s history as that of a land colonised by "foreigner peoples” over the centuries up to the contemporary age. The centuries spanning from 6th to the 11th makes no exception. During this time the island was formally under Byzantine control, which influenced some aspects of its artistic production. Many art-historians still tend to accept André Guillou's proposal of a 'long Byzantine era' and a consequent reading of the whole artistic production of the island as “Byzantine”. However, the great scarcity of written sources, and the few, enigmatic historical evidence of the actual Byzantine influence over the island’s art in the centuries from 8th to 10th make the reconstruction and interpretation of many artistic facts very difficult. The paper also aims to discuss and reassess some historiographical ‘dogmas’ by (re)-examining some early medieval artifacts such as the mural painting of the cave church of St. Andrea Priu near Bonorva, in the north of the island, and the fragment of a ciborium from the village of Nuraminis, in the south. Added to this is the lack of written sources, with the exception of a discrete number of epigraphs in Greek and Latin language dated to the late 10th/early 11th centuries, which have prompted linguistic scholars to join the discussion by proposing a Latin or Greek cultural substratum in order to assert belonging to one or the other culture. The aim of this contribution is also to analyse the historiographical issues and their possible repercussions that Byzantine studies conducted in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had on the development of studies in Sardinia as well as on the political claims of the time in the island. |