In the heart of Naples, the private chapel commissioned by Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, combines baroque genius, esotericism, science and houses one of the greatest sculptural masterpieces of all time: the Veiled Christ.

Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, was one of the most important exponents of the European eighteenth century, a valiant man of arms, a man of letters, an editor, the first Grand Master of Neapolitan Freemasonry, a prolific inventor and an enterprising patron of arts.

His work is still shrouded in mystery and legend, especially following the experiments in the most disparate fields of science and art that he practiced in the underground laboratories of his palace, in Largo San Domenico Maggiore, so famous at the time that it was an essential stop on the Grand Tour.

He stands out for his singular, marvelous, one might say prodigious, genius.

(Censorship of the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books to The Count of Gabalì and the Apologetic Letter, 1752)

The prince experimented with medicine, managing to save important people of the time from “inevitable death”, he learned to counterfeit precious stones and paint marble, he reproduced a compound similar to the blood of San Gennaro, he designed new weapons and marine carriages but, as per his will, all his inventions “disappeared” with him.

His mausoleum, the family chapel that Raimondo di Sangro reorganized starting from the 1740s to give life to an initiatory temple, is today the enigmatic testament of the multifaceted personality of its brilliant creator.

A place rich in symbolism, within which the representations of the Virtues want to represent the stages of a spiritual journey, comparable to that of the initiated Freemason, which leads to a better knowledge and self-perfection.

Among these, the monument dedicated to the memory of the mother, Cecilia Gaetani dell’Aquila d’Aragona, stands out, a statue of a woman, called “Pudicizia”, covered by a veil as an allegory of Wisdom, a direct reference to the veiled Isis, goddess favored by initiatory science (it is said that the statue is placed in the same place where that of Isis stood in Greek Neapolis, inside the temple dedicated to her).

The Veiled Christ was also to be commissioned by the author of Modesty, Antonio Corradini, but he died before he could complete it. So Raimondo di Sangro commissioned a young Neapolitan artist, Giuseppe Sanmartino, to create “a life-size sculpted marble statue, representing Our Lord Jesus Christ dead, covered by a transparent shroud made from the same block as the statue”.

A masterpiece of sculpture, since the 18th century more or less illustrious travellers have come to contemplate this miracle of art, such as Antonio Canova, who during his stay in Naples tried to buy it and is said to have later declared that he would have given ten years of his life to be the sculptor of this incomparable marble.

The visit then continues in the underground Cavea of ​​the Sansevero Chapel where the famous Anatomical Machines, or Anatomical Studies, are preserved in two display cases, that is, the skeletons of a man and a woman in an upright position, with the arteriovenous system almost perfectly intact, created by the Palermo doctor Giuseppe Salerno.

Various legends surround the genesis of these works, but the accuracy of the venous system certainly testifies to the great scientific knowledge that the Prince of Sansevero had achieved with his studies.

Works with which he aimed to discover the secrets of the immortality of the soul, yearning for that of the body, certain that with his artistic legacy of the Chapel he would at least be able to fully demonstrate the immortality of Beauty, understood as a harmony of virtues.

Ph. Credits: by Marco Ghidelli and by Raffaele Aquilante & Alessandro Scarano for 327Collective © Archivio Museo Cappella Sansevero

The Secret

In the Museum of the Historical Archives of the Bank of Naples there is a section dedicated to the Prince of Sansevero. In fact, a document kept in the Archive reports the amount of the work commissioned to Giuseppe Sanmartino, the considerable sum of 500 ducats, while in another document written confirmation is given, by the Prince himself, that even the veil covering Christ was “made from the same block of the statue”.

Useful Info

Cappella Sansevero
Via Francesco De Sanctis 19/21
80134 Napoli
Tel. +39 081 5524936

Admittance: 10 euro, reduced 7 euro