Italia Napoli Cappella Sansevero 4

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Cappella Sansevero
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Palazzo Sangro
Cappella
Piazza San Domenico
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Nested among a net of narrow alleys, this
extraordinary 18th century chapel, also known as
Cappella Sansevero de Sangro from the full name
of the family owners, houses several art objects.
Among these, in the center of the nave, there is
a famous representation of a lying life-sized
marble Christ covered with a shroud carved from
the same block as the statue and as perfect and
realistic that it looks transparent.  Raimondo di
Sangro, Prince of Sansevero and of Castelgrande,
Peer of Spain, knight and Grand Master of the
San Gennaros Knightly Order, man of high culture
and most famous representative of the Casa de
Sangro, was born in Italy in 1710. His
extraordinary life, between fiction and reality,
is celebrated in many works describing both myth
and history of this exceptional man. The
Sansevero Chapel is an extraordinary place of art
and of science in the Neapolitan-18th centurys
setting. This location has been famous, up to
today and possibly excessively, for its
fascinating mysteries, its myths, and legend
about the Dark Prince, its symbolism and for
the striking Anatomical machines with similar
legends. This fame overwhelmed the importance and
the extraordinary beauty and morphology of its
statues and frescoes. The most recent scientific
findings gave light to the real nature of the
Anatomical machines without undermining their
appeal which remain immutable
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The current appearance of the Sansevero Chapel
corresponds to a very precise icono-graphic
design, conceived by Prince Raimondo di
Sangro and realised by the artists who worked
under his supervision
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The Veiled Christ, a world artistic masterpiece,
was to have been in the intention of the Prince
located in the Underground Chamber designed by
di Sangro himself, in the Underground Chamber
that was also to be have been used to house the
future tombs of the Sansevero family, but which
was never finished as the Prince envisaged it
(the present appearance of the Chamber is the
result of work completed after his death)
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Placed at the centre of the nave of the Sansevero
Chapel, the Veiled Christ is one of the most
famous and impressive works of art in the world.
It was the Princes wish that the statue be made
by Antonio Corradini, who had already
done Modesty for him. However, Corradini died in
1752 and only managed to make a terracotta scale
model of the Christ, which is now preserved in
the Museo di San Martino
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So Raimondo di Sangro appointed a young
Neapolitan artist, Giuseppe Sanmartino, to make
a life-sized marble statue, representing Our
Lord Jesus Christ dead, and covered in a
transparent shroud carved from the same block as
the statue
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Giuseppe Sanmartino paid little heed to the
previous scale model made by the Venetian
sculptor. Both in Modesty, and in the Veiled
Christ, the original stylistic message is in
the veil, but Sanmartinos late baroque feeling
and sentiment permeate the shroud with a movement
and a meaning far removed from Corradinis rules
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The modern sensitivity of the artist sculpts and
divests the lifeless body of its flesh, which the
soft shroud mercifully covers, on which the
tormented, writhing rhythms of the folds of the
veil engrave deep suffering, almost as if the
compassionate covering made the poor limbs still
more naked and exposed, and the lines of the
tortured body even more inexorable and precise
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The swollen vein still pulsating on the
forehead, the wounds of the nails on the feet and
on the thin hands, and the sunken side finally
relaxed in the freedom of death are a sign of an
intense search which has no time for preciosity
or scholastic canons, even when the sculptor
meticulously embroiders the edges of the shroud
or focuses on the instruments of the
Passion placed at the feet of Christ. Sanmartinos
art here becomes a dramatic evocation that turns
the suffering of Christ into the symbol of the
destiny and redemption of all humanity
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Sanmartinos  Veiled Christ is one of the
greatest sculptures of all time. Since the
eighteenth century, travellers of all levels of
distinction have come to contemplate this
artistic miracle, to be disconcerted and
enraptured by it
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One of its innumerable admirers was Antonio
Canova, who tried to buy it during his stay in
Naples, and legend has it that he swore he would
have given ten years of his life to have been the
sculptor of this incomparable marble
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Raimondo di Sangros fame as an alchemist and
daring experimentalist has spawned various
legends about him. One of these regards the veil
of Sanmartinos Christ. For over
two-hundred-and-fifty years, in fact, travellers,
tourists and even a number of academics,
incredulous at the transparency of the
shroud, have mistakenly thought it the result of
some alchemical process of marblisation worked
by the Prince of Sansevero
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The legend of the veil is slow to die, however.
The aura of mystery that surrounds the Prince of
Sansevero and the liquid transparency of the
shroud continue to fuel it. For his part, it was
di Sangros aim on this and in other occasions
to inspire wonder. It is no coincidence that it
was he himself who noticed that the marble veil
was really impalpable and made with such art as
to leave the most skilled observers in awe
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Text pictures Internet All  copyrights  belong
to their  respective owners Presentation
Sanda Foisoreanu
2018
Sound Claudio Monteverdi - Selva
morale e spirituale Pianto della Madonna, SV 288