Via De Sanctis 19, near Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, tel. +39 081 5518470.
700 sculptural masterpieces, among which the Christ veiled of the Sammartino. Exemplary of anatomical cars.
Christ Velato
The name (rather, the varied names, of which Naples is prodigal as usual) of the strange building I am exactly: "Chapel Sansevero of the Sangros", or "Saint Maria of the Pity of the Sangros", or still You " Pietatella ". As sepulchral chapel of that illustrious family was built by Giovanni Francesco in 1590, but almost all what we see today it goes up again to the remaking of his child Alexander (1631) and above all to the restaurations and the decorations of the famous pronipote Raymond (1744-1766). A crossover united him to the ancestral abode: but, so much to reenter in the ranks of the mystery that it flutters around chapel and family, it collapsed, without an apparent cause, in 1889. The chapel is an enough vast rectangle, rather a church, in reality, with a presbytery in the fund. The structure is simple and harmonious, the decoration is of an overwhelming wealth, both for the pompous frescos of the turn of Francis Maria Russian with colors gotten by the same Mr. Raymond that preserve an unbelievable liveliness, and for the apparatus of marbles, plasters, golds that everything dresses again. all the burials are of great beauty but the three realizations that have given her imperishable glory (besides the skeletons of the two Anatomical Cars of the crypt) I am the Bashfulness, the Disillusionment and the Christ Velato. The Bashfulness is the name improper datum to the funeral monument of Cecilia Gaetani in the Aquila in Aragon, mother of Mr. Raymond, dead in young age (You broken headstone); the Corradini, to express the concept wanted by the prince of the "bashfulness veiled", a beautiful naked woman carved covered by a transparent veil that makes entirely her immodest for the generosity of the opulent forms that play with the folds of the light fabric giving the tactile impression of a true leaned veil. This sculptural artifice, used already by the Greek of the classicitą for you revere her and for the winged victories, Mr. Raymond liked a lot for the inherent meaning of the to veil and to disclose, dear to the initiates of the hidden and hermetic sciences. He will be used in fact also in the prodigious Christ Morto of the Sammartino. The work was finished in 1751 and on the base introduces a "Hires me tangere", in bas-relief, that always proposes the thematic one some Modesty. The second funeral monument that we will analyze, the Disillusionment, is that of Anthony de Sangro, father of the prince, dead in 1757, that, upset by the great pain for the premature death of his wife, he abandoned to a wandering and uneasy life of which discovered the " deception " withdrew to monastic life surrendering the things of the world and the little child Raymond to his father Mr. Paul. Francis Queirolo, always on suggestion of Mr. Raymond, a man represented (Mr. Anthony) how free of a net that envelops, working, he is said, in a solo marmoreal block, with a goldsmith skill in the extreme difficulty to realize the marmoreal net enveloped to the inside figure. A winged genietto that brings on the head a flaming coroncina and that it leans on a globe and a book, it symbolizes the talent undeceived that the man helps to disentangle from the slavery of the vicious net. The bas-relief of the base Christ that ridona the sight to the blind one reinstates the concept of the found again truth. The Christ Velato then the work synthesis of the whole chapel can be retained. He has always struck the imagination of the visitors with the strength of a suggestion that has not suffered variations for centuries. The prince of Sansevero had commissioned the great Christ Morto with the symbols of the Passion (hammer, nails, pliers) to the Corradini, but being dead in 1752, his terracotta sketch, today to the museum of S. Martino, it was splendidly realized in marble by the young sculptor Neapolitan Joseph Sammartino that started so his bright career really with this 1753 work. In the crypt they find, then, two closets that contain two among the most unbelievable creatures that exist to the world. It deals with the Anatomical Cars, two human bodies which the monstrous scientific ability of the prince, with a prepared of his invention, it has removed the " bodily wrap ", metallizzando until in the last capillary the whole system of the veins and the arteries. It is not known as has been effected neither he is known if the two miserable persons were or already dead when he has been finished.
Another hypothesis tells that it deals with a completely artificial construction but also so it is not understood as is been able to realize keeping in mind of the means of the epoch.
Visiting Time: Munday to Friday 10 a.m. - 8 p.m., Holidays 10 a.m. - 1.30 p.m., Closed on Monday.
Access: £8.000, groups of students £3.000.
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