Chapel

The building of the former Tridentine Seminary, inaugurated in 1778, houses, on the ground floor, a simple chapel with a barrel vault and lunettes. The space, which served as the Seminary’s oratory until the mid-1950s, currently houses the oldest and most valuable part of the University Library’s rare and valuable collection. It contains manuscripts, incunabula, and a considerable number of sixteenth-century editions, as well as a smaller number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions, distributed in the collections labeled Cinquecento, Rossello, Rari, and Baylle. The Chapel also houses the Prints Cabinet, established in 1946 to collect engravings by Sardinian artists, and has been enriched over the years with new acquisitions. Temporary exhibitions are held in the Chapel to promote the collection and increase its enjoyment.
In the chapel, on the back wall, there is an altar of polychrome inlaid marble, crafted by a Sardinian workshop in the early 19th century. It has three steps and a tabernacle with a small silver door depicting the Agnus Dei. A curved window adorned with white stucco overlooks the altar.
At the top of the arch is the coat of arms of the University of Cagliari, which depicts the Virgin Mary in the center. On the sides are the crowned coat of arms of Cagliari, again with the Aragonese pennants, as the university was founded during the Spanish era, and that of the Kingdom of Sardinia, with the four Moors. At the base are the emblems of the Sardinian Pope Hilary and the bishops Lucifer and Eusebius .

The vault features numerous tempera paintings, including two large central tondos and a smaller one on the wall opposite the altar. The first of the two larger ones depicts the Virgin , whose inscription highlights the attribution of sedes sapientiae, the repository of divine wisdom, with the Child in her lap, surrounded by angels; the second depicts Christ handing the symbolic keys to Saint Peter, while the smaller tondo portrays Eusebius, Sardinian by birth and bishop of Vercelli, in the act of blessing. There are several coats of arms of popes and bishops, to name just a few, that of Bishop Pietro Balestra , a Franciscan, which represents the emblem of the Franciscan order, with the arms of Christ and that of Saint Francis crossed.  

The coat of arms of Giuseppe Sarto , who became Pope with the name of Pius X in 1903, is important because the date of the beginning of his pontificate represents the term “ante quem non” for the dating of the pictorial decoration of the vault of the Chapel. The coat of arms of Monsignor Berchialla , who was Archbishop of Cagliari from 1881 to 1892, is particular. It depicts a Trinitarian triangle with an inscription in Hebrew, likely IAHVE’.
We also mention the coat of arms of the Four Moors and that of the City of Cagliari , as well as that of the Cathedral with its patron saint Saint Cecilia , while in the six lunettes are painted a Pisan tower , a view of the sea , a nuraghe , a church , a small island in the middle of the sea and finally, in a typically Sardinian landscape, a shepherd in traditional dress with his flock.
The pictorial decorations are anonymous, but the style recalls that of the Tuscan Citta and his pupil Baciccia Scano, painters active in the province of Cagliari between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.