Author of the entry: Sabrina Iorio
The story of the foundation of the Sansevero Chapel, handed down in the sources with no significant variation, recounts the appearance of a painting of the Madonna della Pietà on the exterior walls of the garden of the Di Sangro palace in San Domenico Maggiore, having come to light following the collapse of a wall. Giovan Francesco di Sangro, Duke of Torremaggiore, was the owner of the palace at the time and, having recovered from an illness thanks to the intercession of the miraculous icon, decided to erect a small place of worship dedicated to the image. Thus, around 1590, the earliest nucleus of the church of Santa Maria della Pietà, known as the Pietatella, was established as a votive chapel, far removed from the monumental form assumed by the present building (d’Engenio Caracciolo 1623, pp. 262–263).
The mausoleum dedicated to Giovan Francesco di Sangro (1524–1604), granted the title of first Prince of Sansevero in 1587 (relinquished and transferred to his son Paolo the following year), is located in the second arch of the left nave of the church. In 1634, the tomb is mentioned as being to the right of the high altar, alongside the monument to Alessandro di Sangro, during the church’s first pastoral visitation under Archbishop Francesco Boncompagni. The still unpublished document, discovered by Mariano Saggiomo (2021–2022, pp. 504–505) in the Diocesan Historical Archive of Naples, also refers to the dimensions of the monument (ten palms in height) and notes that it was adorned cum columnis porfidi nigri coloris, no longer visible today, though still recorded in the Inventario dei beni rimasti nell’eredità del fu eccellentissimo Raimondo di Sangro principe di San Severo drawn up in 1771 (fols. 115v–120r, especially fols. 117v–119r; cf. Attanasio 2011, pp. 148–150, esp. p. 149). According to the inventory, similar columns also adorned the monuments of Paolo di Sangro, second and fourth Princes of Sansevero (cf. entries 19 and 13). It is therefore probable that the collapse of the church’s counter-façade in 1889 damaged the columns of one or both tombs, placed in the first two arches respectively on the right and left from the entrance, and that, for the sake of uniformity, a decision was subsequently taken also to remove them from the monument to Giovan Francesco. The two columns, on the other hand, were preserved in the tomb of the Patriarch of Alexandria, owing to its different placement in the sanctuary (cf. entry 4).
The monument is first mentioned in 1623 by Engenio Caracciolo (pp. 262–264), who merely transcribes the inscription without dwelling on its artistic qualities. Indeed, seventeenth-century periegetic sources are somewhat laconic in their descriptions of the tombs, transcribing, at most, only their inscriptions. They praise, instead, the church as a whole for its ‘works of finest marbles’ and its ‘statues of many worthy members of that family’ (cf. de Lellis 1654, p. 150; Sarnelli 1685, pp. 197–198), or for its ‘many noble and sumptuous tombs with exceedingly beautiful statues, both ancient and modern’ (Celano 1692, p. 35). Even late eighteenth-century literature, although far more detailed regarding the monuments erected in the Pietatella at the time of Raimondo di Sangro, treats the older tombs in a rather summary manner, attributing them generically to Giovanni Marigliano da Nola (c. 1488–1558), Girolamo Santacroce (c. 1502–1537), Cosimo Fanzago (1591–1678), and others (Origlia Paolino 1754, p. 365; Breve nota 1766, p. 6; cf. Attanasio 2011, pp. 57–58; Celano 1792, p. 87). In the 1771 inventory already cited, the statue of the first Prince of Sansevero is associated for the first time with a name, that of Giovanni da Nola (fol. 117v; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 149); a century later Gennaro Aspreno Galante (1872, p. 160) would attribute it to Fanzago, regarded as the sculptor of the ‘tombs of Francesco and the three Paolo di Sangros, placed beneath the four arches to the side of the entrance’.
A richly worked marble intarsia frames the life-size statue of the Prince in armour, standing upright, holding a lance in his right hand and a sword in his left. The sculpture is set within a pedimented aedicule in a distinctly late Mannerist style, recognisable by its elongated proportions and the devices used to disrupt the rigidity of the architectural scheme, such as paired pilasters and capitals suspended at three-quarter height along the pilaster strips. In the lower section, the broad plinth, bearing the long commemorative inscription dedicated to Giovan Francesco by his son Alessandro (Patriarch of Alexandria and Archbishop of Benevento), is surmounted by an angular inlaid urn with a lion-paw base.
In her pioneering study of the Sansevero Chapel, Marina Picone (1959, pp. 77–78) observes that the statue of Giovan Francesco di Sangro, while still showing a ‘late Mannerist sensibility within the Naccherino–D’Auria cultural current’, in fact reveals more modern tendencies, comparable to the figure decorating the tomb of Paolo di Sangro, fourth Prince of Sansevero, dated 1642 and placed in the first arch on the left on entering the church (cf. entry 13), with which it ‘shares its cultural imprint, as though they were two distinct compositional ideas matured within the same milieu’. On this basis, Picone suggested a date for the statue of Giovan Francesco between the 1640s and 1650s (ibid.).
Thanks to Eduardo Nappi’s extensive research in the archives of the Banco di Napoli, it has been possible to advance the chronology of the work on documentary grounds, as Alessandro di Sangro made payments to Giacomo Lazzari between 1614 and 1615 (cf. Nappi 2010, pp. 94–95, 113, docs. 38–40). Distinguishing between the creator of the marble architectural structure (documented as Lazzari) and the sculptor of the effigy, Oderisio de Sangro (1991, pp. 191–196, no. 17) proposes for the latter the name of Michelangelo Naccherino (1550–1622), already engaged from 1609 in the execution of the tomb of Paolo di Sangro, second Prince of Sansevero, and his son Ferdinando (cf. entry 19). More recently, the statue has also been placed within Naccherino’s orbit by Mario Panarello (2010, pp. 30–32), who, on stylistic grounds, relates it especially to the work of Tommaso Montani, a sculptor trained in Naccherino’s workshop.
In the present writer’s opinion, identifying Giacomo Lazzari as responsible for the monument’s design and marble decoration is decisive in orienting the attribution of the statue. Considering the circle that gathered in Naples in the early decades of the seventeenth century around Lazzari, an artist who regularly subcontracted sculptures to specialist artists (Iorio 2015), within this operational framework the statue of the first Prince of Sansevero may plausibly be attributed to Francesco Cassano, one of the most representative figures of Neapolitan sculpture in the late Cinquecento.
The formal classicism underlying the measured and restrained gesture of the figure, the near-silent expressiveness of the face, and the soft modelling of volumes achieved through the smooth and polished surfaces are, in fact, consistent with Cassano’s style. In the same years, he worked with Lazzari on commissions from Monsignor Antonio Giustiniani at the Cathedral in Bovino (1606–1609) and the church of the Girolamini in Naples (1613–1615; ibid., pp. 88–89). In the facial features, Giovan Francesco’s heavy eyelids and sharply delineated irises find a direct parallel in the bust of _Cristo Redentore _in the Chapel of San Filippo Neri at the Girolamini (c. 1615), attributed to Cassano by the present author (ibid., p. 88). On the other hand, the rounded brow arches and dense eyebrows recall the funerary statue of Francesco Albertini (1590) in the church of San Biagio in Nola (Grandolfo 2014, p. 8). Characteristic elements of Cassano’s repertoire are also present in the handling of costume details, such as the stockings wrinkled at the knee, whose naturalism anticipates fully Baroque developments already evident in the sculptor’s Pompeo dell’Uva (1597), originally from Santa Caterina in Capua and now in the Museo Campano (Giorgi 2015, pp. 54–56).
The statue of the Immacolata Concezione on the altar of the Barone Chapel in Nola Cathedral (1590–1591) and the Personificazione dei due Diritti (1614), now in the great cloister of Santa Maria la Nova in Naples, both bearing the signature of Cassano (ibid., passim), speak the same visual language that underpins the Giovan Francesco di Sangro monument. This continuity is evident in formal terms, in the definition of the facial features and the airy, forceful spatial conception of standing figures, as well as in the treatment of material, as can be seen in the broad, flowing rendering of the hair repeated in the feathered helmet at the warrior Prince’s feet.
Essential bibliography on the work
d’Engenio Caracciolo Cesare, Napoli sacra…, Naples, Ottavio Beltrano, 1623, pp. 262–264.
de Lellis Carlo, Parte seconda, overo supplimento a ‘Napoli sacra’ di don Cesare d’Engenio Caracciolo, Naples, per Roberto Mollo, 1654; edition cited: Luciana Mocciola and Elisabetta Scirocco (eds), Naples–Florence 2007, p. 150, online only: www.memofonte.it.
Sarnelli Pompeo, Guida de’ forestieri…, Naples, Giuseppe Roselli, at the expense of Antonio Bulifon, 1685, pp. 197–198.
Celano Carlo, Notizie del bello, dell’antico e del curioso della città di Napoli…, III, Naples, in the printing house of Giacomo Raillard, 1692; edition cited: Paola Coniglio and Riccardo Prencipe (eds), with final revision by Paola Coniglio, Naples–Florence 2009, p. 107, online only: www.memofonte.it.
Origlia Paolino Giangiuseppe, Istoria dello Studio di Napoli…, II, Naples, Giovanni di Simone, 1754, pp. 364–365.
Breve nota di quel che si vede in casa del principe di Sansevero don Raimondo di Sangro nella città di Napoli, [Naples] 1766, p. 6.
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. 115v–120r.
Celano Carlo, Delle notizie del bello, dell’antico e del curioso della città di Napoli per gli signori forastieri… Quarta edizione, in cui si è aggiunto tutto ciò che si è di nuovo fatto in Napoli ne’ nostri tempi…, Giornata Terza, Naples, Salvatore Palermo, 1792, p. 87.
Galante Gennaro Aspreno, Guida sacra della città di Napoli, Naples 1872, p. 160.
Picone Marina, La Cappella Sansevero, Naples 1959, pp. 77–78.
de Sangro Oderisio, Raimondo de Sangro e la Cappella Sansevero, Rome 1991, pp. 191–196, no. 17.
Nappi Eduardo, Dai numeri la verità. Nuovi documenti sulla famiglia, i palazzi e la Cappella dei Sansevero, Naples 2010, pp. 94–95, 113, docs. 38–40.
Attanasio Sergio, In casa del Principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, pp. 57–58, 148–150.
Comparative bibliography
Panarello Mario, Artisti della tarda maniera nel Viceregno di Napoli. Mastri scultori, marmorari e architetti, Soveria Mannelli 2010, pp. 30–32.
Grandolfo Alessandro, ‘Patronati gentilizi e memorie funebri in Santa Maria Donnaregina Vecchia a Napoli nei secoli XIV–XVII: il ciclo scultoreo dei Loffredo di Monteforte’, in Napoli nobilissima, ser. VI, V, 2014, 1–2, pp. 3–30, esp. p. 8.
Giorgi Lucia, ‘Francesco Cassano, scultore per la famiglia dell’Uva a Capua. L’altare-sepolcro di Pompeo e la decorazione delle cappelle gentilizie’, in Ricerche sull’arte a Napoli in età moderna. Saggi e documenti 2012–2013, Naples 2015, pp. 44–59.
Iorio Sabrina, ‘Sull’arte marmorea di primo Seicento a Napoli: Iacopo Lazzari, Tommaso Montani, Francesco Cassano, Giovan Marco Vitale e Giovan Domenico Monterosso’, in Ricerche sull’arte a Napoli in età moderna. Saggi e documenti 2015, Naples 2015, pp. 82–105.
Saggiomo Mariano, Le chiese gentilizie napoletane di Età Moderna: per la ricostruzione storica di un fenomeno dimenticato, PhD thesis in Historical, Archaeological and Art-Historical Sciences from the Federico II University of Naples, XXXIV cycle, under supervisors Francesco Caglioti and Bianca de Divitiis, academic year 2021–2022, pp. 501–552, esp. pp. 504–505.
DOI: 10.82049/CATALOGO11