Festivities at a Sardinian Sanctuary

This is one of a series of three large canvases portraying life in Sardinia. They were made in 1747 for the hillside villa of Giovanni Battista Bogino, a minister under Charles Emmanuel III. The canvases re-veal Bogino’s early interest in the island: he was actually nominated head of the Segreteria per gli Affari di Sardegna only in 1759 and, while he held the post – which he kept until 1773 – he introduced a se-ries of administrative and university reforms, maintaining close correspondence with the officials he sent to the island. In order to create the various stages of the hunt, from the chase to the capture of the deer, Granieri or-ganises the various figures and scenes in a zigzag movement along a path leading up towards a moun-tain. The iconographic sources from which Granieri may have taken his models still remain to be identi-fied.