The Mural dedicated to the patron saint was conceived and created in 1976 by Angelo Pilloni, a muralist from San Sperate who was a protagonist with Pinuccio Sciola in the birth of the Paese Museo. The work, created on the wall of a private home overlooking the central Holy Cross Square, was meant to meet the needs of the owner, who wished for a representation of the patron saint – to whom he was particularly devoted – and the cultural needs of the art movement that had been animating the town for about a decade. The result achieved is a splendid marriage of Faith and peasant culture, sanctioned by strong symbolic elements: the Nuragic altar and the sneering mask represent the historical roots of the settlement, on which the roots of a plant and a stone wall are grafted. What certainly strikes the viewer is the sheep lying dead on the wall fragments, a figure of an agropastoral world that incipient industrialization was leading to death. In the original version of the mural in place of the flourishing citrus tree, there was a peach tree dying from the prolonged drought, which was no longer benefited by even the tireless work of the farmer.
But hope was still held high, in that saint carried in procession with faith and devotion by the entire village, under the watchful observation of the pious woman who sits and pours out the rosary and the man with su bonettu in the lead that-as if in defiance of social conventions-shows superior detachment.
In the 1994 restoration, carried out by the muralist Pilloni himself, the layout of the mural was not changed except for the detail of the peach tree replaced by the orange tree: a revisitation in light of a new phase in the life of the community, pervaded by a renewed impetus to recover ancient traditions: the first arboreal crops in San Sperate were citrus and not peaches.
