Author of the entry: Luigi Coiro

Carlotta Gaetani (1718–1779), consort of Raimondo di Sangro, outlived her husband, who died in 1771; the medallion behind the allegorical figure that was to portray her in the monument he dedicated to her therefore remained only roughly blocked out, lacking iconographic elements.

The iconography of Sincerità undoubtedly takes its cue from Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1603, pp. 455–456), which states that this virtue is to be represented as a ‘woman dressed in gold, who holds a white dove in her right hand, and, with her left, proffers, in a graceful and pleasing gesture, a heart’. In the eighteenth-century five-volume edition of Ripa’s work (1764–1767), financed by Raimondo di Sangro and dedicated to him, Cesare Orlandi envisaged instead, in partial divergence from the illustration in the text, that the ‘most beautiful young woman, with hair as fair as gold falling over her shoulders, […] and dressed in a very fine and pure white veil’, should bare her breast with her right hand, holding in her left ‘a caduceus, at the top of which is a white dove’ (Ripa 1767, p. 181).

According to an insightful interpretation by Raffaele Colapietra (1986a, p. 72), Carlotta Gaetani, that is to say, Sincerità, ‘amounts to a kind of reincarnation of Cecilia Gaetani, Pudicizia: a return to the mother through the wife, in the very place where the errores paterni found their bloody seal, hence an expiatory and lustral significance for the entire episode’. The same scholar further argues that the heart and, above all, the two doves (one in flight, the other in the hands of the winged putto) rather than the single dove indicated by Orlandi, ‘symbolise ongoing marital bliss, with respect to which death is indicated only as a prospect, by means of Mercury’s caduceus, which defines the woman as a psychopomp, that is, a guide and vehicle towards death’ (Colapietra 1986b, pp. 144, 152, note 70).

Giangiuseppe Origlia Paolino (1754, p. 366) records that Queirolo was still working on the statue of _Sincerità _at that time. The sculptor almost certainly completed the figure by 1758, when the patron dismissed him, though not abruptly, since he continued to work until 1760. Yet, as Marina Picone observes (1959, pp. 96–97; cf. Cioffi 1994, p. 40), the putto with the two doves, ‘of very fine workmanship, fleshy and lively’, so closely resembling the putto with the dove in the group of the Soavità del giogo coniugale executed by Paolo Persico in 1768 (cf. entry 8), should certainly be attributed to the latter. The corpulent cherub, which, according to Picone, was intended ‘to complete the ensemble as it appeared in Corradini’s bozzetto’ (Picone 1959, p. 97), must have been added by 1771, when it is recorded in the inventory of the assets of the Di Sangro Chapel and palace, drawn up at the Prince’s death (Inventario 1771, fols. 79r–80v; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 135). It is improbable that this possible addition was even partly the reason for the gratuity of eleven ducats with which the patron, in the contract of 1766 for the execution of the two Angeli con putti flanking the high altar, expressed his appreciation for the work completed up to that point (for the document see Forgione 2022, pp. 64–66, doc. 5).

It should also be noted that Persico is already documented in 1759 as working in the Chapel and described as ‘sculptor to his lord the Prince of San Severo’ (Nappi 2010, p. 136, doc. 442). Accordingly, notwithstanding the presence of the year 1758 on the dedicatory slab, it cannot be excluded that this winged putto with the two doves is one of his earliest works for the Chapel, dating from shortly after 1760.

The task of completing the portrait of Carlotta Gaetani, however, was entrusted neither to Persico nor to Francesco Celebrano, nor to any later artist, since she was still living at the time of Raimondo’s death. A trace of the work’s genesis may nonetheless be found in what the Prince asserted at the fifth point of the so-called Positiones set out in the legal dispute between him and Queirolo. In response to Di Sangro’s declaration that he had delivered to the sculptor ‘the plaster cast of the mask of the Princess his wife, made by Signor Canardi’ – most likely the sculptor and restorer Giuseppe (Joseph) Canart (1713–1791) – Queirolo replied on 14 July 1761, confirming that he was in possession of several of the disputed bozzetti, including this plaster model (Chartulae desangriane 2006, pp. 67, 81–83).

For Rosanna Cioffi (1994, p. 40), in comparison with the Liberalità (cf. entry 12), the Sincerità more clearly reveals ‘Corradini’s original conception’ and its proximity to the style of Giuseppe Rusconi (1688–1758), especially to the Fortezza in the Cappella Corsini in St John Lateran in Rome, from which, however, the Sansevero commission diverges ‘in the treatment of the drapery, with sharper folds more closely adhering to the body’. For Marina Picone (1959, p. 97), while working on this figure, Queirolo must have revived ‘the memory of allegorical representations of classical purity’ encountered during his time in Rome, such as the figure of Speranza by Agostino Cornacchini (1686–1754) in the Palazzo del Monte di Pietà in Rome, where one finds ‘the same circling flow of the folds and a comparable degree of affectation’.

The troubled genesis of the ensemble, from a probable Corradini bozzetto to Queirolo, with a Persico ‘coda’, is also indicated by the different marbles used for the two figures. Perhaps the most balanced composition among the works in the nave, it met with the approval of, among others, the Lombard sculptor Donato Andrea Fantoni (1746–1817), who, during his stay in Naples in 1769, had occasion to visit the Chapel and make rapid sketches of the Pudicizia (cf. entry 6), the Disinganno (cf. entry 26), and the Sincerità (Fantoni 1977, pl. 64).

Essential bibliography on the work

Origlia Paolino Giangiuseppe, Istoria dello Studio di Napoli…, II, Naples, Giovanni di Simone, 1754, p. 366.

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. 79r–80v.

Picone Marina, La Cappella Sansevero, Naples 1959, pp. 96–97.

Fantoni Donato Andrea, Diario di viaggio e lettere. 1766–1770, Anna Maria Pedrocchi (ed.), Bergamo 1977, pl. 64.

Colapietra Raffaele, ‘Raimondo di Sangro e il Templum sepulcrale della Cappella Sansevero (I)’, in Napoli nobilissima, ser. III, XXV, 1986a, pp. 62–79, esp. p. 72.

Colapietra Raffaele, ‘Raimondo di Sangro e il Templum sepulcrale della Cappella Sansevero (II)’, in Napoli nobilissima, ser. III, XXV, 1986b, pp. 142–154, esp. pp. 144, 152, note 70.

de Sangro Oderisio, Raimondo de Sangro e la Cappella Sansevero, Rome 1991, pp. 176–178, no. 11.

Cioffi Rosanna, La Cappella Sansevero. Arte barocca e ideologia massonica, first edition: Salerno 1987; edition cited: Salerno 1994, pp. 39–40, fig. 13.

Nappi Eduardo, Dai numeri la verità. Nuovi documenti sulla famiglia, i palazzi e la Cappella dei Sansevero, Naples 2010, pp. 102, 136, doc. 442.

Attanasio Sergio, In casa del Principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, p. 135.

Comparative bibliography

Ripa Cesare, Iconologia overo descrittione di diverse imagini cavate dall’antichità et di propria inventione…, Rome, presso Lepido Facii, 1613, pp. 455–456.

Iconologia del cavaliere 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, p. 181.

Chartulae desangriane. Il Principe committente, exhibition catalogue, Bruno Crimaldi (ed.) (Naples, Museo Cappella Sansevero, 28 March 2006), Naples 2006, pp. 67, 81–83.

Forgione Gianluca, I simulacri delle cose. La Cappella Sansevero e il barocco romano, Turin 2022, pp. 64–66, doc. 5.

DOI: 10.82049/CATALOGO25