Author of the entry: Mariano Saggiomo

The half-bust depicts Paolo di Sangro, Raimondo’s beloved grandfather, with whom he was brought up in the absence of his father Antonio, who was entangled in largely dubious affairs that kept him away from Naples, and in which Paolo himself appears to have been implicated to some extent (Colapietra 1986, pp. 69–71; Nappi 2010, pp. 15–17). Sixth Prince of Sansevero from 1698, Paolo is better remembered as a man of letters and a prominent political figure at the Austrian court of Naples, under whose rule he served as Regent of the Collateral Council and Prefect of the Annona (ibid.). In 1712, he was appointed Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece (La Toison d’Or 1962, p. 52). For his literary activity see Saggiomo 2023, p. 64, no. 56; to the corpus of works written by or dedicated to him may now be added, following a communication from Fabrizio Masucci, whom I thank, the Egloghe pastorali e favolose by Domenico Andrea de Milo (1698). Upon Paolo’s death in 1726, the title passed to Raimondo, rather than to his father, owing to the latter’s legal difficulties, which had compelled him to take holy orders (Masucci; Spruit, in Raimondo di Sangro 2020, p. 22).

The critical discussion of the monument centres, as usual, on the testimony of Origlia Paolino (1754, p. 365), who records that the Venetian sculptor Antonio Corradini, in Raimondo’s service from 1750, before his death in 1752, had completed for his patron, among other things, ‘two half-busts: one of the Prince of Sansevero Don Paolo di Sangro, grandfather of the present Prince, and the other of his father, the Duke of Torremaggiore’. Both works attracted little attention in the subsequent literature on the Chapel. The fate of the portrait of Antonio (never mentioned beyond Origlia) remains uncertain to this day, and the suspicion arises that it may never have found a place in what must have been the repeated revisions of the Chapel’s arrangement during Raimondo’s patronage. The marble bust of Paolo, by contrast, is recorded in its present position in the inventory of the goods remaining in Raimondo’s estate in 1771 (fols. 91r–93v; cf. Attanasio 2011, pp. 139–140). Even here, however, the anonymous compiler focuses more on the marble setting than on the sculpture itself, though he notes the loss of the two giarroni, probably placed at the ends of the pediment near the cross (ibid.). The bust is next mentioned in Pompeo Sarnelli’s guide of 1772 (p. 127), and subsequently in Gennaro Aspreno Galante’s Guida sacra della città di Napoli (1872, p. 160), where it is, tellingly, treated as a seventeenth-century work and associated with Cosimo Fanzago: ‘Also by Fanzaga [that is, Cosimo Fanzago, 1591–1678] are the tombs of Francesco and the three Paolos of the Sangro family, placed beneath the four arches on the side of the doorway’. The decorative structure of the setting and the use of a naturalistic mode of representation do indeed bring the bust closer to seventeenth-century production than to that of the following century, rendering it in a certain sense a work of transition between the two phases of the Chapel’s formation.

If one follows the inscription, as some scholars have done, the work would date to 1742 (cf. Picone 1959, pp. 103–105; and, with less caution, Cioffi 1994, pp. 13–14). This dating, however, would require the commission to have been placed during Corradini’s Roman period (with the exception of Colapietra 1986, p. 73, who situates its execution in Naples that year), a hypothesis that presents difficulties. The chronology of Corradini’s arrival in Rome is not securely established, but it is likely that he settled there on a permanent basis only towards the end of 1742, attracted by the opportunity of working at St Peter’s, where eight of his ‘prophets’ were intended for the drum of the dome (cf. Cogo 1996, pp. 112–122, especially p. 116; Saggiomo 2022, p. 50). The time available was therefore insufficient for the execution of the bust of Paolo, particularly as Origlia’s account implies that the two half-busts were in some sense meant to be in dialogue with each other within the Chapel, which would require the simultaneous completion of the portrait of Antonio. As if that were not enough, it should not be forgotten that the dates inscribed on the Chapel’s monuments are almost never a reliable criterion for establishing the chronology of the respective works. The lectio facilior, therefore, is to date the work in question to Corradini’s Neapolitan period, i.e., between 1750 and 1752, a view which Cogo 1996 (pp. 323–325, no. 50) also appears to favour.

The question of the iconographic source remains open, given that Paolo died in 1726. Cogo (ibid., p. 324) considered he could ‘not exclude that the bust may have been remade, perhaps to replace an earlier, less successful, one, already present on the monument, or in place of a portrait painted from life on which Corradini may have drawn’. The first hypothesis is wholly without foundation, while the second must rest on a proposal by Picone (1959, p. 105), who suggested that the sculptor ‘went about executing the portrait of Paolo … from an image of him, probably a painting in the manner of Solimena, characterised by physiognomic rigour and decisiveness of line’.

More recently, a painting now in the Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri in Naples has been identified as closely related to the bust (Saggiomo 2022). The faint and previously illegible signature can be associated with Gabriele (Italianised to ‘Gabriello’) Matthei, a little-known painter and engraver responsible for several portraits of Austrian rulers and plausibly active between his native city, Florence, and Rome (a study devoted to him by the writer is in preparation). Although the dating of the painting is uncertain, it can be placed in the 1740s and therefore cannot derive from a sitting taken from life. It follows that an earlier model (whether painted or engraved) must have existed, serving as the common source for both Matthei’s painting and, possibly through it, Corradini’s bust. It should be recalled that, for figures of such standing, likenesses were often created from death masks. The inventory of 1771 (fol. 61v; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 128; Colapietra 1986, p. 76, no. 8) records, for instance, a ‘clay head of the deceased Duke of Torremaggiore’, that is, of Antonio di Sangro, Raimondo’s father. Something of the kind must very probably have also existed for Paolo.

Essential bibliography on the work

Origlia Paolino Giangiuseppe, Istoria dello Studio di Napoli…, II, Naples, Giovanni di Simone, 1754, p. 365.

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. 91r–93v.

Sarnelli Pompeo, Nuova guida de’ forestieri…, Naples, Saverio Rossi, 1772, p. 127.

Galante Gennaro Aspreno, Guida sacra della città di Napoli, Naples 1872, p. 160.

Picone Marina, La Cappella Sansevero, Naples 1959, pp. 103–105.

Colapietra Raffaele, ‘Raimondo di Sangro e il Templum sepulcrale della Cappella Sansevero (I)’, in Napoli nobilissima, ser. III, XXV, 1986, pp. 62–79, esp. p. 73.

Cioffi Rosanna, La Cappella Sansevero. Arte barocca e ideologia massonica, first edition: Salerno 1987; edition cited: Salerno 1994, pp. 13–14.

Cogo Bruno, Antonio Corradini scultore veneziano. 1688–1752, Este 1996, pp. 323–325, no. 50.

Attanasio Sergio, In casa del principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, pp. 139–140.

Saggiomo Mariano, ‘Due aggiunte al catalogo di Francesco Liani ritrattista’, in Paragone. Arte, LXXIII, 2022, 871–873, pp. 43–67, esp. pp. 47–53.

Comparative bibliography

De Milo Domenico Andrea, L’Egloghe pastorali e favolose… dedicate all’illustrissimo et eccellentissimo sig. il signor [sic] Don Paolo di Sangro duca di Torremaggiore etc., Naples, at the press of Gramignani, 1698.

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.

La Toison d’Or. Cinq Siècles d’Art et d’Histoire, exhibition catalogue (Bruges, Museum of Fine Arts, 14 July – 30 September 1962), Bruges 1962, p. 52.

Colapietra Raffaele, ‘Raimondo di Sangro e il Templum sepulcrale della Cappella Sansevero (I)’, in Napoli nobilissima, ser. III, XXV, 1986, pp. 62–79, esp. pp. 69–71, 76, note 8.

Cogo Bruno, Antonio Corradini scultore veneziano. 1688–1752, Este 1996, pp. 112–122.

Nappi Eduardo, Dai numeri la verità. Nuovi documenti sulla famiglia, i palazzi e la Cappella dei Sansevero, Naples 2010, pp. 15–17.

Attanasio Sergio, In casa del principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, p. 128.

Raimondo di Sangro. Cronaca di vita e opere, Fabrizio Masucci and Leen Spruit (eds), Naples 2020, p. 22.

Saggiomo Mariano, ‘Due aggiunte al catalogo di Francesco Liani ritrattista’, in Paragone. Arte, LXXIII, 2022, 871–873, pp. 43–67, esp. pp. 50, 64, note 56.

DOI: 10.82049/CATALOGO21