The Mother Of The Slain: From Nuragic Sardinia To Francesco Ciusa 0 Comments

by Daniela Toti

There are images that cross the centuries without losing their power. One of these is the grief of a mother mourning her dead son.

In Sardinia this image appears twice in the history of art: once in the ancient world of the Nuragic civilization and again in the twentieth century, in the famous sculpture The Mother of the Slain by Francesco Ciusa. Two works separated by almost three thousand years, yet united by the same human intensity.

The Mother of the Slain

In the rugged and spectacular landscape of central-eastern Sardinia, among steep mountains, deep gorges and caves, at the archaeological site of Sa Domu 'e S'Orcu near Urzulei, a small bronze statuette dating back three thousand years was discovered. Scholars later named it The Mother of the Slain.

The statuette, about ten centimeters high, depicts a seated woman holding an adult man in her arms. The woman raises her right hand in a gesture of prayer, while with her left she supports her son with visible effort. The son is represented as an adult man and carries the typical dagger and headgear of Nuragic warriors.

A Pietà before the Pietà

If we close our eyes and think of Michelangelo’s famous Pietà, the iconographic resemblance is striking: a mother holding her dead son in her arms.

Of course, it does not belong to the same artistic tradition, but the archetypal image is the same: motherhood confronting loss, in one of the earliest representations of maternal grief in European art.

Francesco Ciusa and The Mother of the Slain

Almost three thousand years later, another image of maternal sorrow would emerge in Sardinia.

Between 1906 and 1907 the sculptor Francesco Ciusa created another Mother of the Slain, a sculpture destined to become one of the most powerful works of twentieth-century Italian art.

Exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1907, the work immediately achieved great success. The sculpture portrays an elderly woman dressed in traditional Sardinian clothing, seated with her arms wrapped around her knees in a position reminiscent of the funeral vigil known as Sa Raja.

During this ritual, women gathered around the extinguished hearth to mourn the loss of their loved ones. Despite the enormous success, Ciusa did not receive an official award at the Biennale. Nevertheless, the sculpture was purchased for the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, marking a triumph for the Sardinian artist.

What strikes the viewer most is the intensity of the face: a restrained, dignified, almost silent sorrow. The features are marked by suffering, while the tightly closed lips suggest a grief too deep to be expressed in words.

The inspiration came from a real event that took place in Nuoro in 1897: the murder of a young man during a feud. The young Ciusa witnessed the desperate pain of the victim’s mother. That memory profoundly marked him and years later became the emotional core of his most famous work. Today the original plaster sculpture is preserved at the Galleria Comunale d'Arte di Cagliari.

Three thousand years of art and memory

The Nuragic bronze from Urzulei and Ciusa’s sculpture belong to completely different eras. Yet they tell the same human truth. In both works the mother’s suffering becomes a symbol of memory, grief and dignity. It is as if Sardinia had preserved, for millennia, this universal image: the mother who protects, mourns and remembers.

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If during your stay at the Gabbiano Azzurro Hotel & Suites you wish to discover some of the most fascinating places in Sardinian history, visiting Gallura can become a journey through art, archaeology and memory.