ANDREA BOCEDI — NURACU D’IZZANA

Nuraghe Izzana in the Burnt Plain of Gallura

I visited Nuraghe Izzana while travelling through the interior of Gallura, near Aggius and Tempio Pausania. The landscape around it belongs to the Piana dei Grandi Sassi, also known as Valle della Luna: open ground, granite boulders, rough pasture and mountains softened by heat.

What stayed with me was not simply the age of the monument. It was the lack of separation between the nuraghe and the present. There was no museum atmosphere and no attempt to turn it into a picturesque ruin. It stood inside the farm, close to tracks, fences and everyday work.

That made it feel more alive. The past had not been removed and carefully displayed. It was still there, heavy and slightly awkward, surrounded by the same hard landscape from which its stones had been taken.

Stone, weight and two dark openings

The real nuraghe is built from massive local granite. Its unusual structure combines features associated with early corridor nuraghi and the later tholos type.

I did not want to count and describe every stone. I wanted the whole building to feel compact and heavy. The two openings became the darkest points in the painting — almost black, but small enough not to break the unity of the structure.

More information about the monument can be found on the official SardegnaCultura page about Nuraghe Izzana.

A Bronze Age Monument Inside a Working Farm

Archaeological sites are often photographed in a way that removes every sign of contemporary life. At Izzana, the farm is part of the experience. The monument, the fields and the present-day landscape exist together.

That relationship became the main idea of the painting. The nuraghe is the strongest form, but it does not rise above the land like a romantic castle. It is made from the same dirty browns, cold greys and muted greens as everything around it.

From a distance, it seems halfway between a building and a natural formation. It could almost be another outcrop of granite. Only the dark entrances reveal the human hand and the strange purpose behind the mass of stone.

The atmosphere came from something very simple: a structure built thousands of years ago still standing inside an ordinary field.

Painting Nuraghe Izzana from Photographs and Memory

I painted Nuracu d’Izzana later in the studio. I used my own photographs, but I was also relying on what had remained in my head: the washed-out light, the rough scale of the stones and the severe openness of the plain.

I did not follow one photograph literally. The distant mountains were simplified, the field was opened up and the sky reduced to a pale strip. I wanted enough empty space around the nuraghe for it to carry real weight.

The panoramic 20 × 40 cm format helped. A more compact canvas would have turned the work into a portrait of the building. Here the structure and the plain remain equally important.

Painterly Truth, Not Archaeological Illustration

An ancient stone building can easily become a trap for a painter. Every block begins to demand an accurate edge, a separate colour and its own little description. The result may be correct, but it often loses the force of the whole form.

I wanted enough information for the building to be recognisable, but not so much that the painting became an archaeological reconstruction. Some stones are clearly stated; others disappear into one larger passage of colour.

For me, the truth of the place was in the relationships: the cold openings against warmer granite, the heavy structure against the open plain and the bleached sky pressing down over everything.

The paint remains visible throughout. Thick, broken marks build the top of the nuraghe, while thinner passages allow the field and distant mountains to stay quieter. The rough surface belongs to the subject. A polished finish would have taken away some of its severity.

More Paintings and Stories from Sardinia

Gallura keeps returning in my work. The region offers much more than bright sea colour: granite, dry vegetation, sudden weather, hard light and places where history is still physically present in the landscape.