Author of the entry: Mariano Saggiomo

On 8 August 1766, Raimondo di Sangro concluded an agreement with the Roman sculptor Fortunato Onelli for the latter to execute in eight months ‘the entire monument with the Zelo della Religione, consisting of a statue seven palms high representing the said Zelo; an isolated putto in the act of killing serpents emerging from books; two further putti supporting a double-headed medallion; and, finally, a bas-relief set within the framing of the urn, together with a square urn on two marble feet’ (the quotation is taken from the notarial contract, transcribed in Forgione 2022, p. 66, doc. 6; for the corresponding bank order see Nappi 2010, pp. 142–143, doc. 459). The direction of the work was entrusted to Francesco Celebrano, who was also to supervise the model’s execution, although the model itself was made by Onelli (cf. the notarial contract and the bank order cited above). In practice, however, matters proved more complex and protracted than expected, even though the role assigned to Celebrano and certain clauses in the contract (beyond the standard formulae), had already suggested an initial misgiving about the success of the commission, a doubt that evidently proved justified. After the eight-month term had expired, the sculptor received only 256 of the 280 ducats agreed as payment, since Raimondo withheld twenty-four ducats on the grounds that it had been necessary ‘to call in other expert craftsmen to remedy the defects’ in the work and to purchase additional marble to complete the unfinished parts (ibid., p. 144, doc. 462). The sum was in fact modest, but it was settled in this manner as ‘an act of urbanity and courtesy on the part of the Prince’, who was informed that ‘the said Onelli is burdened with a large family’ (ibid.).

Unaware of all this, the authors of historical guidebooks to Naples unanimously attributed the monument to Antonio Corradini (see at least Sigismondo 1788, p. 37; D’Aloe 1838, pp. 18–19; and Galante 1872, pp. 160–161). Taken up by Riccoboni (1952, p. 154), this attribution was rejected by Picone (1959, p. 80), who, while also excluding the authorship of Francesco Celebrano (certainly the executor of the Dominio di sé stessi, cf. entry 22), instead proposed recognising in the work what she considered ‘the loftiest name in the Sansevero Chapel’: Francesco Queirolo (1704–1762). In any case, considering the archival evidence cited above, there is no basis for attributing even the bozzetto of the work to Queirolo, as Colapietra (1986, p. 143) would have it, on the grounds that the Genoese sculptor had certainly produced a model for the Dominio. This does not alter the fact that the question of the models remains one of the most complex in relation to the Chapel as a whole, since it is difficult to determine whether, in which works, and to what extent, each of the workshop supervisors reworked earlier bozzetti (on this issue see Picone 1959, p. 37; Cioffi 1994, pp. 11–12; and Cogo 1996, pp. 325–330, no. 51). Cioffi (1994, pp. 21–22) has rightly emphasised that the elderly figure representing Zeal shows affinities with the Tempo attributed to the Venetian Giovanni Bonazza, part of the Valier tomb in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, a monument which Corradini, as a fellow Venetian, must have known and may well have had in mind when preparing a bozzetto for the Zelo.

Intended to celebrate Ippolita del Carretto and Adriana Carafa della Spina, first and second wives of Giovan Francesco di Sangro, first Prince of Sansevero, the allegory represents the triumph of the truths of faith over the shadows of heresy, symbolised by the serpents emerging from the books below, promptly crushed and driven back by the elderly figure on the right and the winged child on the opposite side. The iconographic source is readily identifiable in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, a late sixteenth-century work whose most ambitious eighteenth-century re-edition was edited by Cesare Orlandi and financed by Raimondo di Sangro himself. The Prince frequently drew on it for the allegorical programme of his Chapel. In Ripa’s formulation (1767, p. 417), the ‘whip’ and the ‘lighted lamp’ are attributes of Zeal, ‘a certain love of religion’, serving to ‘instruct the ignorant [and] correct and punish errors’. The oval contains the portraits of the women to whom the monument is dedicated, while above it is the coat of arms of the Carafa della Spina family. The inscription running along the base today is very different both in composition and layout from the one recorded in the 1771 inventory (fols. 121r–v; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 150) and must therefore have been entirely reworked at some time that can no longer be precisely determined.

Essential bibliography on the work

Inventario de’ beni rimasti nell’eredità del fu eccellentissimo don Raimondo di Sangro principe di Sansevero, Naples, notary Francesco de Maggio, 1771, copy of the document held at the Archivio Storico del Pio Monte della Misericordia di Napoli, d’Aquino di Caramanico collection, provisional shelfmark A.162, fols. 120r–121v.

Sigismondo Giuseppe, Descrizione della città di Napoli e suoi borghi…, II, [Naples,] Terres, 1788, p. 37.

D’Aloe Stanislao, Tesoro lapidario napoletano, II, Naples 1838, pp. 18–19.

Galante Gennaro Aspreno, Guida sacra della città di Napoli, Naples 1872, pp. 160–161.

Riccoboni Alberto, ‘Sculture inedite di Antonio Corradini’, in Arte Veneta, VI, 1952, pp. 151–161, esp. p. 154.

Picone Marina, La Cappella Sansevero, Naples 1959, p. 80.

Colapietra Raffaele, ‘Raimondo di Sangro e il Templum sepulcrale della Cappella Sansevero (II)’, in Napoli nobilissima, ser. III, XXV, 1986, pp. 142–154, esp. p. 143.

de Sangro Oderisio, Raimondo de Sangro e la Cappella Sansevero, Rome 1991, pp. 186–188, no. 15.

Cioffi Rosanna, La Cappella Sansevero. Arte barocca e ideologia massonica, first edition: Salerno 1987; edition cited: Salerno 1994, pp. 21–22.

Nappi Eduardo, Dai numeri la verità. Nuovi documenti sulla famiglia, i palazzi e la Cappella dei Sansevero, Naples 2010, pp. 142–143, doc. 459, and pp. 143–145, doc. 462.

Attanasio Sergio, In casa del Principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, p. 150.

Napoli, la Cappella Sansevero e il Cristo velato. Naples, Sansevero Chapel and the Veiled Christ, texts by Marco Bussagli, photographs by Carlo Vannini, Bologna 2019, pp. 50, 58–59, 82–85.

Forgione Gianluca, I simulacri delle cose. La Cappella Sansevero e il barocco romano, Turin 2022, p. 66, doc. 6.

Comparative bibliography

Iconologia del cavalier Cesare Ripa perugino, notabilmente accresciuta d’immagini, di annotazioni e di fatti dall’abate Cesare Orlandi, patrizio di Città della Pieve accademico augusto. A Sua Eccellenza don Raimondo di Sangro…, I–V, Perugia, Piergiovanni Costantini, 1764–1767, V, 1767, pp. 417–419.

Picone Marina, La Cappella Sansevero, Naples 1959, p. 37.

Cioffi Rosanna, La Cappella Sansevero. Arte barocca e ideologia massonica, first edition: Salerno 1987; edition cited: Salerno 1994, pp. 11–12.

Cogo Bruno, Antonio Corradini scultore veneziano. 1688–1752, Este 1996, pp. 325–330, no. 51.

DOI: 10.82049/CATALOGO10