Author of the entry: Sabrina Iorio
The tomb of Paolo di Sangro, second Prince of Sansevero, is the earliest of the funerary monuments in the church of Santa Maria della Pietà, but its authorship and chronology have so far remained disputed. It is now possible, however, to attribute the work on documentary grounds to the Florentine sculptor Michelangelo Naccherino, who executed it between 1609 and 1615; moreover, the monument did not always appear as it does now: it originally comprised three life-sized statues, the princely effigy flanked by two allegorical figures, one male and one female, and not the single standing Prince at the centre of an architectural surround seen today. This is what emerges from two distinct documents, or rather from the relationship between two known sources, which have always been treated separately: a payment record in the Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli (Nappi 1975, pp. 123–124; idem 2010, pp. 110–111, docs. 318–323) and an ink-and-watercolour drawing in the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (D’Agostino 2013, pp. 226–232, fig. 1).
The tomb’s present location, in the first arch to the right of the entrance, dates from Raimondo di Sangro’s post-1742 refurbishment of the Chapel. In the original church, it stood to the left of the high altar, where it is mentioned in a 1634 report on the first episcopal visitation to the Pietatella, then under Archbishop Francesco Boncompagni (Saggiomo 2021–2022, pp. 505–506). It is subsequently recorded in its current position in the 1771 inventory of Raimondo di Sangro’s estate, drawn up by notary Francesco de Maggio (fols. 96r–99v; cf. Attanasio 2011, pp. 141–142).
Paolo is portrayed as a Roman commander, an exception among the ‘portraits’ of the Di Sangro family in the funerary chapel, where the figures are dressed in contemporary costume and well characterised in both attire and physiognomy. The statue is framed by an elaborate revetment of marmi commessi, whose broad geometric panels bordered with white listels reflect a distinctly early seventeenth-century taste. The commemorative inscription, set up by Paolo di Sangro, fourth Prince of Sansevero (1609–1636), and first recorded by Carlo de Lellis in Napoli sacra (1654, p. 141), gives 1626 as the year of the Prince’s death, which has shaped the entire historiography concerning the dating of the sculpture and, consequently, the identification of its author.
This attribution of the monument has never commanded unanimous support in either the sources or in later scholarship. Periegetic sources largely confine themselves to general praise of the oldest tombs, occasionally transcribing their inscriptions. In the mid-eighteenth century, Giangiuseppe Origlia Paolino established a line of interpretation that would persist in subsequent scholarship, attributing the four seventeenth-century tombs to Giovanni Merliano da Nola (c. 1488–1558), Cosimo Fanzago (1591–1678), and other ‘celebrated sculptors of those times’ (Origlia Paolino 1754, pp. 364–365; Breve nota 1766, p. 6; cf. Attanasio 2011, pp. 57–58; Galanti 1792, p. 144). Despite its meticulous account of the marbles (clearly for the purpose of assessing their value), the 1771 inventory offers no attribution for Paolo’s statue. The work was subsequently assigned to Giovanni da Nola by Pompeo Sarnelli (1772, p. 126), and later to Fanzago, whom Gennaro Aspreno Galante (1872, p. 160) considered responsible for all four tombs ‘placed beneath the four arches to the side of the entrance’.
Turning now to modern critical reception, in her monograph on the Sansevero Chapel, Marina Picone (1959, p. 14) was the first to place the sculpture among works ‘in the Naccherino–D’Auria vein’ on stylistic grounds, and more recently the statue reappears with a tentative attribution to Naccherino alone in Mario Panarello’s study of ‘late Mannerist’ sculpture (2010, pp. 30–32).
This concludes the stylistic analysis. Turning to a different kind of enquiry: drawing on records from the Banco di Napoli, in his book on the Di Sangro Family, Eduardo Nappi assigned the tomb to the circle of collaborators of the Florentine marmoraio Giacomo Lazzari (1574–1640), the principal recipient of payments made in the name of Alessandro di Sangro, Patriarch of Alexandria, for unspecified marble works in the Chapel from 1627 onwards, i.e., immediately after Paolo’s death, with which the monument’s execution had conventionally been associated (Nappi 2010, pp. 93–95, 113, docs. 343–344). The connection between the tomb and the Cooper-Hewitt drawing was instead established by Paola D’Agostino (2013, pp. 226–232), who attributed the sheet to the architect Bartolomeo Picchiatti (1571–1643), thereby proposing him as the designer of the monument, with Lazzari responsible for overseeing its execution. She further suggested Naccherino’s involvement in at least two of the three statues depicted in the drawing (the princely effigy and the male allegory), while assigning Paolo’s statue more cautiously to the master’s circle, on the assumption that it post-dated 1626, by which time Naccherino had already been dead for four years.
In the light of the rare discovery of the New York drawing (graphic designs for Neapolitan family tombs being extremely rare), a more careful reading of the known documentary record allows the details of the execution of the monument to be clarified at last. Contrary to the prevailing view, the tomb was not commissioned posthumously by Paolo’s brother, the Patriarch of Alexandria, but by Paolo himself in 1609, on the occasion of the premature death of his son Ferdinando, aged twelve. This is confirmed by a payment identified by Nappi: on 31 October 1609, through the Banco di Santa Maria del Popolo, Naccherino received one hundred ducats ‘in the name of the Prince of Sansevero as a deposit for a tomb that he is to make for the said lord, in conformity with the design made by the said Michelangelo … which serves also for his son, Don Ferdinando di Sangro, in his Chapel of the Pietà de Sangro, for which tomb he is to make three marble statues, one of which is to be seven-and-a-half palms high, the other seven, and the third six-and-three-quarters’ (Nappi 2010, pp. 110–111, doc. 320). Although the stated purpose of the payment order explicitly indicates a tomb for the Prince that could also serve as a resting place for his son’s remains, the document has always been associated with a monument Naccherino supposedly made specifically for Ferdinando but which was subsequently lost, with the exception of the surviving inscription (ibid., p. 93) still in the church and incorporated into a marble memorial in the passage giving access to the underground chamber (cf. entry 18). In this light, the Cooper-Hewitt drawing instead provides new information on this well-known payment record of 31 October and on the significance, in its stated purpose, of the adverb anco (‘also’), indicating a single tomb intended for both father and son. Six further payments to Naccherino, previously associated with a supposed lost monument for Ferdinando, can accordingly be reassigned to the execution of Paolo’s tomb.
The iconography described in the payment record (three standing figures of seven and a half, seven, and six and three-quarter palms) corresponds exactly to that shown in the New York drawing, which can therefore be definitively attributed to Naccherino. The drawing, as already noted, constitutes a rare document, probably an appendix to the contract by which the agreement between Paolo di Sangro and the Florentine sculptor for the execution of the monument was formalised.
The artist’s Tuscan background is discernible in the calligraphic quality of the drawing, with a fine, lively line in the figures and a firmer, more linear treatment of the architectural elements. The application of colour, without parallel in the Neapolitan context, serves not only an aesthetic but also a practical function, assigning each architectural or decorative element a specific type of marble with precision, a practice confirmed in the detailed descriptions contained in notarial deeds, i.e., in the agreements concluded between the two parties concerning the forms and materials to be used in the execution of a monument. The Prince is depicted as a man-at-arms in antique dress, flanked by two allegorical figures: a nude, partly draped youth, in whom one might recognise an allusion to the young Ferdinando, and a sorrowful female figure, probably a reference to his mother, Clarice Carafa. Both figures were, in all likelihood, removed from the monument a century and a half after their execution during the refurbishment promoted by Raimondo di Sangro. While the male figure found a place within the Prince of Sansevero’s new iconographic programme, becoming part of the tomb of Giovanna di Sangro as an allegory of the Amor divino, the female figure, now lost, has been identified by Gianluca Forgione as ‘an ancient marble statue, about seven palms high, representing a Woman resting her face on one hand in an attitude of sorrow’, which Raimondo di Sangro gave to the sculptor Paolo Persico in part payment of the Soavità del giogo coniugale and for the Angelo con putto to the right of the high altar (for the notarial contract mentioning the statue, stipulated between Di Sangro and Persico on 28 July 1766, cf. Forgione 2022, pp. 28–30, 64–65, doc. 5).
The later history of the monument did not end with the eighteenth-century refurbishment. On the night of 22–23 September 1889, the left wing of Palazzo Sansevero, adjacent to the Chapel, collapsed as a result of water infiltration, causing considerable damage, particularly to the counter-façade, where a falling cornice struck two holy-water stoups, which remain in position (Colonna di Stigliano 1895, p. 34). One may perhaps suppose that this event also definitively compromised the arrangement of Paolo di Sangro’s tomb, and, in particular, the composition of the marble revetment. The most visible sign of this incident is the absence of the two Ionic columns in breccia di Francia, flanking the Prince in Naccherino’s drawing and still recorded in the 1771 inventory (cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 142). It is worth noting that, according to the same document, similar columns also adorned the monuments of Giovan Francesco and Paolo di Sangro, first and fourth Princes of Sansevero respectively (cf. entries 11 and 13). While it is plausible that the 1889 collapse damaged the tombs of the second and fourth princes by virtue of their proximity to the counter-façade, it is more reasonable to suppose that in the tomb of Giovan Francesco, the columns were removed for reasons of visual uniformity with the other monuments.
In the statue of Paolo di Sangro, Naccherino’s style manifests itself in what has been described as an ‘undoubted and somewhat dreary underlying piety … raised to a solemn monumentality and genuine interiority’ (Nava Cellini 1972, p. 784). In its original position in cornu Epistulae, with its chiastic pose and head turned towards the altar, the statue engaged directly with the icon of the _Madonna della Pietà _from which the Sansevero Chapel took its origin, establishing a devotional dialogue characteristic of Counter-Reformation art that so deeply conditioned Naccherino’s output – as the affinity in conception and composition with the funerary monument to Fabrizio Pignatelli for the Arciconfraternita della Trinità dei Pellegrini, completed precisely in 1609 (Kuhlemann 1999, pp. 59–60) makes clear. At the same time, the rich decorativism in the rendering of the armour, chased almost like a goldsmith’s work in the pictorialist details of the breastplate and greaves, with their grotesque masks and foliate scrolls, reveals a still deeply Mannerist sensibility, equally congenial to the sculptor’s compositional approach. In the softly modelled features of the delicate and refined face, and in the archaic style of the garments, the Prince’s effigy is situated in an indeterminate time: the conventional requirements of portraiture coexist here with the idealised image of an ancient commander, and only the Spanish-style moustache appears to anchor Paolo to his earthly existence. The practice of commissioning one’s funerary monument during one’s lifetime required certain accommodations in the handling of the portrait, requiring the artist to place the subject in a timeless dimension. Through this device too, Naccherino succeeded, with considerable skill, in giving form to a living man within the immutable celebration of his funerary memory.
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 1654, edition cited: Luciana Mocciola and Elisabetta Scirocco (eds), Naples–Florence 2007, p. 141, online only: www.memofonte.it.
Origlia Paolino Giangiuseppe, Istoria dello Studio di Napoli…, II, Naples, Giovanni di Simone, 1754, pp. 364–365.
Sarnelli Pompeo, Nuova guida de’ forestieri…, Naples, Saverio Rossi, 1772, p. 126.
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. 86v, 96r–99v.
Galanti Giuseppe Maria, Breve descrizione della città di Napoli e del suo contorno, Naples, presso li Socî del Gabinetto Letterario, 1792, p. 144.
Galante Gennaro Aspreno, Guida sacra della città di Napoli, Naples 1872, p. 160.
Picone Marina, La Cappella Sansevero, Naples 1959, pp. 14, 106–107.
Nava Cellini Antonia, ‘La scultura dal 1610 al 1656’, in Storia di Napoli, V, II, Cava de’ Tirreni 1972, pp. 781–825, esp. p. 784.
Nappi Eduardo, ‘La famiglia, il palazzo e la cappella dei principi di Sansevero. Dai documenti dell’Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli’, in Revue Internationale d’Histoire de la Banque, 1975, no. 11, pp. 122–125, docs. 29–33, 49, 51.
de Sangro Oderisio, Raimondo de Sangro e la Cappella Sansevero, Rome 1991, pp. 209–212, no. 22.
Kuhlemann Michael, Michelangelo Naccherino: Skulptur zwischen Florenz und Neapel um 1600, Münster 1999, pp. 224–225.
Nappi Eduardo, Dai numeri la verità. Nuovi documenti sulla famiglia, i palazzi e la Cappella dei Sansevero, Naples 2010, pp. 93–95, 110–111, docs. 318–323, and p. 113, docs. 343–344.
Panarello Mario, Artisti della tarda maniera nel Viceregno di Napoli. Mastri scultori, marmorari e architetti, Soveria Mannelli 2010, pp. 30–32.
Attanasio Sergio, In casa del Principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, pp. 57–58, 138, 141–142.
D’Agostino Paola, ‘The Second Prince of Sansevero’s Tomb: Addenda to a Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Drawing in the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York’, in West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, XX, 2013, 2, pp. 226–232.
Forgione Gianluca, I simulacri delle cose. La Cappella Sansevero e il barocco romano, Turin 2022, pp. 28–30, 64–65, doc. 5.
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. 505–506.
Comparative bibliography
Colonna di Stigliano Fabio, ‘La cappella Sansevero e D. Raimondo di Sangro’, in Napoli nobilissima, IV, 1895, 3, pp. 33–36.
Kuhlemann Michael, Michelangelo Naccherino: Skulptur zwischen Florenz und Neapel um 1600, Münster 1999, pp. 59–60.
DOI: 10.82049/CATALOGO19