entry May 2003, upd: 2010, 2011, box
added 2019
The Veiled Christ; Raimondo di Sangro; Giuseppe Sanmartino
A friend asked me recently if I
had ever heard the story that the sculptor of the famous
Veiled Christ within the Sansevero chapel had
been "rewarded" by the person who commissioned the work
by having his eyes put out so that he would never again
create such a work of beauty! I said, no, that I had not
heard that story —or even that kind of
repugnant story— except in connection with Ivan the
Terrible and the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, who built
St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. That story is false
since Yakovlev's works after St. Basil's are documented.
The same goes for
the sculptor of the Veiled Christ, Giuseppe Sanmartino
(1720-93). He created the masterpiece in question in
1753. His further works throughout the rest of his life
are documented in catalogues of Neapolitan sculpture;
they include works in the monastery/museum of San
Martino and the Naples Cathedral (Duomo).
His last work appears to have been in 1792: a sculpture,
Moses and Aaron and the Tablets of the Law, on
the entrance of the Church
of the Gerolomini.
So much for that
horrid story about being blinded. It set me to
wondering, though, where my friend had come up with such
a story. There are a number of encyclopaedia references
and short biographical sketches of Raimondo di Sangro,
Prince of Sansevero (1710-1771), the gentleman who
commissioned the Veiled Christ for his family
chapel. He is listed —when briefly— as an "inventor and
the person who imported freemasonry into the Kingdom of
Naples" and —when at length— with rambling descriptions
of his reputation as a sorcerer, inventor, charlatan,
alchemist, friend of Charles III of Bourbon, even lover
of music. In that regard, he is said to have bought
young boys with good voices from their poverty-stricken
families and castrated them to preserve their fine
soprano voices as castrati —in
search of the "primordial androgyny". God help us. Even
the infamous Count of Cagliostro at his trial before the
Inquisition court in Rome in 1790 is said to have
claimed that everything he knew about the evil arts and
alchemy he learned from di Sangro.
Raimondo di Sangro was no doubt the kind
of mysterious and powerful person that inspired awe
among the masses of the mid-1700s in Naples. A good
description to that effect is found in Benedetto Croce's Storie e
Leggende napoletane. Croce says that for the
masses that live in the narrow by-ways of the inner part
of the city where the chapel is located, di Sangro was
the perfect comparison with Faust, who sold his soul to
the devil for magical powers. Croce repeats a number of
rumors about di Sangro: that he murdered seven cardinals
of the church and had furniture made from the bones and
skin; that he could reduce metals and marble to dust by
touching them; and —here it is— that he had the eyes
removed of the sculptor of the Veiled Christ.
That remarkable
piece of sculpture, by the way, always evokes the same
comment: How did he make the veil? How is it that you
see the features of the Savior beneath the veil? Did
Sanmartino sculpt it that way? How is that possible? One
hypothesis is that the finished statue was covered with
a cloth and that the cloth was permeated with a solution
that crystallized as calcium carbonate, creating the
veil. Only Sanmartino knows for sure.
With all due
respect to one of the most beautiful works of art I have
ever seen, the Veiled Christ is surrounded by an almost
Barnumesque display of weirdness. In the ex-secret
chamber of the chapel, there are the remains of a man
and woman, mummified such that the inner organs and the
arteries and veins of their circulatory systems are
preserved and on display. Whether or not the two persons
on display were di Sangro's servants whom he put to
death for minor disobedience, as rumor has it, is almost
irrelevant. Indeed, a strange duck, Raimondo di Sangro,
Prince of Sansevero. He even wrote his own
epitaph:
A person to be admired, born to dare…illustrious in the sciences, mathematics and philosophy, unsurpassed in discovering the secrets of nature and esteemed master of the military arts…this temple is dedicated to his everlasting memory. |
Nov. 2010: Thixotropic update on di Sangro and the Miracle of San Gennaro!
Thixotropy is the property of some gels or fluids that are thick under normal conditions to flow when shaken or agitated. That describes what happens in the purported miracle of San Gennaro: a vial of clotted blood turns liquid, producing the miracle. I make it a point not to judge the miracles of others. I simply note a recent three-day congress, "Reason and Mystery," held at the Orientale University of Naples and sponsored by the Sansevero Chapel Museum on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of Raimondo di Sangro's birth. The highlight of the event was a presentation of a long-forgotten account by French mathematician and geographer, Charles Marie de la Condamine, of his Grand Tour to Naples in 1754. The author describes how di Sangro manipulated a vial containing mercury, tin and bismuth, the amalgam of which appeared to be clotted blood, such as to obtain a similar "miracle" of liquefaction. Di Sangro was already in hot water with the Vatican, and this bit of "blasphemy" didn't help.
update: Nov. 2011: Also see this small item about a remarkable copy of The Veiled Christ.
box added July, 2019
Here are two paragraphs from MK's (Marius Kociejowsi) forthcoming book, The Serpent Coiled in Naples. They are in his chapter on Raimondo di Sangro. |
Although
Raimondo’s masonic phase was a relatively
short one, covering only two years, it is
difficult to resist the notion that the spirit
of it might have accompanied him over the
years to come. The accusations by his fellow
masons stung Raimondo deeply and he withdrew
from public life, spending more and more time
in La Fenice where he involved himself
in pursuits of a more private scientific
nature. If suppression of his activities had
been the intention, what this exclusion from
public life did was to initiate a period of
experimentation and invention unrivalled since
the days of Leonardo da Vinci and conducted in
as many directions. A stop at his studio
became a feature of the Grand Tour and what
Raimondo sought to do was nothing less than to
amaze his visitors.to art portal to top of this page
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