Author of the entry: Luigi Coiro
On 2 February 1780, during his first stay in Naples, Antonio Canova (1757–1822) had occasion to visit the ‘chapel of the House of San Severino, […] full of statues and marble tombs’, among which the still young sculptor particularly admired ‘the veiled statue by Corradini’ and ‘a Christ of natural size, laid upon a sheet and covered by a veil […], the work of Giuseppe Sanmartino, still living’ (cf. entries 6 and 5); the two statues that seemed to him most worthy, however, ‘were a kneeling Santa Rosalia and the Saint in the chapel on the counter-façade’ (Canova [1779–1780] 1959, pp. 76–77; cf. Cioffi 1994, pp. 60–61). Canova was clearly referring to the Sansevero Chapel and to Saints Rosalia and Oderisio, whom Carlo Giuseppe Ratti had already included among the statues fashioned by Francesco Queirolo ‘in the service of the Prince of San Severo’, albeit confusing Oderisio with ‘Turibbio, Bishop of Astorga’ (Ratti 1769, p. 308, the printed text corrects, but not sufficiently, the ‘San Torribbio, Bishop of Lima’ of the manuscript: Ratti [1762, fol. 177v] 1997, p. 215; cf. Labò 1933, p. 504; Picone 1959, p. 95).
Marina Picone’s masterly stylistic exegesis of the two works, especially of the Santa Rosalia, ‘which in its transcendent vision remains the more refined realisation’ in comparison with the Sant’Oderisio, would merit reproduction in full, since it rivals the works themselves in clarity and refinement. For Picone, the Santa is undoubtedly a manifesto of Queirolo’s sculpture, which here displays ‘all his preference for a precious, elegant form, carried to alabastrine smoothness’, and even appears to look back to ‘decorative cadences’ of a Mannerist stamp, more in keeping with the ‘refined formal elegance of Pietro Bernini’ than with ‘the convulsive, painterly world of Gian Lorenzo’ (ibid., p. 96). The folds of Sant’Oderisio’s mantle are treated in a similar manner, though here one notes a more pronounced painterliness, a broader handling, and, both in the ‘perceptible naturalistic inflection’ and in ‘the physical type of the Saint […], an adaptation to local tradition, to the Saints of Fanzago and D. A. Vaccaro’. What ultimately unites the two sculptures is the observation that the artist, particularly in the Santa Rosalia, perhaps because he was freer ‘from the complex psychological constraints and the bizarre “inventions” imposed by Raimondo’ found a way of realising his image with the greatest and most personal restraint of expression (ibid., pp. 84, 96).
Giangiuseppe Origlia Paolino (1754, p. 365) records that Raimondo di Sangro had considered adding, in the remaining chapels, further tombs ‘with a suitably conceived design of certain Saints of his own House, which would enclose their venerable relics and serve at the same time as a base for their life-size statues’. It thus appears that in 1754 the two monuments, almost identical in ‘construction, marbles, and eulogy’ (Sarnelli 1772, p. 132; cf. Inventario 1771, fol. 79r, and Attanasio 2011, p. 152), were already in place, though without the statues, which had probably been completed and installed by 1756, the date inscribed on the Sant’Oderisio. Hence, despite some opinions favouring Antonio Corradini, who died in August 1752, Celano (1792, p. 88), followed by D’Ambra and De Lauzières (1855, p. 223), Chiarini (in Celano 1858, p. 450) and, in the last century, Riccoboni (1952, p. 155), it is now acknowledged – taking into account probable underlying models and drawings by Corradini – that at least the execution of the two Saints should be attributed to Queirolo. It is also evident that, in the eighteenth century, the mausolea of Santa Rosalia and Sant’Oderisio also served ‘as chapels for the celebration of Mass’ (Breve nota 1769, p. 6), each furnished with a marble mensa ‘with a carved element supporting it’ (Inventario 1771, fol. 78r; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 134), and that in the ‘urns in oriental marble […] were to be placed the relics of Saint Oderisio and Saint Rosalia of the Di Sangro family’ (Sigismondo 1788, p. 36), or, as Celano puts it, in the ‘two most beautiful little chapels, one dedicated to Sant’Odorisio in cornu Epistolae, the other to Santa Rosalia in cornu Evangelii, […] their relics were to be placed’ (Celano 1792, pp. 87–88).
This evidently corresponded to a design by Raimondo, perhaps ‘inherited’, through his grandfather Paolo, from his great-grandfather Giovan Francesco, which the Prince did not succeed in carrying out, although he held the memory of the two ancestral saints in such regard as to include them in a triad, headed by the Madonna della Pietà, ‘SACELLIS VIRGINI A. PIETATE, S. ODERISIO AC SANCTAE ROSOLIAE DICATIS’, in the inscription on his own monument (cf. entry 24), and to accord them due prominence in the iconographic programme of the Gloria del Paradiso (Paradiso dei Di Sangro), painted in 1749 by Francesco Maria Russo on the vault of the church (cf. entry 28). Thus, ‘although he did not have the remains of the two saints, Raimondo nevertheless wished to honour their memory, assigning to them the place of honour on the two frontal altars’ (Picone 1959, p. 95). The pair of altars, in a crescendo that passes from the four chapels with the genealogical ‘precursors’, through Raimondo with his monument, and his son Vincenzo portrayed above the small door, thus emerges almost as a presbyterial prelude and corollary to the high altar.
From letters preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library, brought to light by Eduardo Nappi (2010, pp. 102–103), we learn that on 14 June 1754, Raimondo di Sangro wrote a long letter to Dom Marino Migliarese, Abbot of Montecassino, listing the benefactions his family had bestowed on the Benedictines, as well as his ancestors who had brought distinction to the order: above all Oderisio de Sangro, who, before being canonised, had been abbot of Montecassino, and who, at his death in 1105, was buried in that church. From the late sixteenth century onwards, the proposal to transfer the saint’s remains from Montecassino to the Pietatella, to the altar dedicated to him, repeatedly failed to materialise, and even the Prince’s promises of perpetual gratitude to the Benedictine Order produced no result. On 15 March 1755, Migliarese in fact ‘replied that he was aware of the altar dedicated to the saint by his descendants in Naples’, and that the rightful request for a relic (which would not have met with opposition from the Benedictines) could not be fulfilled, since the place of the saint’s burial was unknown (ibid.).
An unpublished ‘pastoral visitation’ to the Pietatella by Innico Caracciolo, discovered by Mariano Saggiomo (2021–2022, pp. 506–507), does not mention (perhaps because it already existed and required no adjustment) an altar dedicated to Santa Rosalia; it does, however, report, with regard to works carried out between 1677 and 1679, that ‘after the sacristy has been properly arranged with everything required, the altar of Sant’Odorisio may be brought into order according to the wishes of the most excellent Prince of San Severo’ (Archivio Storico Diocesano di Napoli, Sante Visite, 1677, II, fol. 144v).
In those years, however, an attempt to obtain a relic of the saint was probably already underway, as may be inferred from circumstances linked to the publication of the Trionfo del dolore (1674), a description of the solemn funeral rites held in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Torremaggiore in honour of ‘Donna Giovanna di Sangro of the Marquesses of San Lucido, Princess of San Severo’ (cf. entries 13 and 18). The tenth and eleventh medallions of the apparati were dedicated to Sant’Oderisio and Santa Rosalia, and the account of the latter’s life and miracles, ‘of the Counts of Marsi and of Sangro, […] daughter of Sinibaldo of the Counts of Marsi’, whose ‘holy relics were discovered in Palermo by divine disposition, at the time when that great city was afflicted by a most severe pestilence’ (1624), followed by the extensive Latin eulogy placed ‘beneath her portrait’, is among the most substantial sections of the volume (Arminio Monforte 1674, pp. 240–275). The saint is presented as ‘protectress against plague of the city of Naples itself, which obtained from Palermo a notable relic: sent therefore by that Senate to the author of this book, so that he, bearing credentials in the capacity of ambassador to the city’s representatives, might present it, having placed it in the church of Santa Lucia del Monte by divine disposition; so that in Santa Lucia del Monte the relic of that saint who had brought light to the pilgrim mountain might be venerated. Many noblemen regard this saint as special protectress of their households in the Kingdom, and the Austrian monarchs venerate her as defender of their States, so that, just as they take pride in having the House of Di Sangro as their subject, so they boast of having Santa Rosalia di Sangro as protectress of their kingdoms’ (ibid., p. 265).
The rapid diffusion of this devotion across Europe, also by means of the saint’s relics (Scalisi 2023), reached Naples in the second half of the seventeenth century and, according to the 1700 edition of Domenico Antonio Parrino’s Guida (p. 118; cf. Coiro 2013, p. 210), Santa Lucia al Monte already contained, among other chapels, one ‘consecrated to the Palermitan virgin Santa Rosalia, with a painting of the saint by Andrea Vaccaro’ (1604–1670).
The Augustinian friar Fulgenzio Arminio Monforte, appointed prior of Florence in 1656 and later theologian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Bishop of Nusco from 1669 to 1680 (De Blasi 1962; Melchionna 2012), and author in 1662 of L’anno della grazia: discorso per santa Rosalia la reale vergine e protettrice di Palermo, consagrato all’illustrissimo suo Senato (published under the name of Fulgenzio Arminio d’Avellino, ‘preacher of the principal church of Palermo’), played a decisive role in the arrival in Naples of the ‘notable relic of the arm of Santa Rosalia’ as a gift from the Senate of Palermo (Bottero 2008, p. 540). Among the authors most frequently consulted for accounts of the ceremonies held for the late Giovanna di Sangro, the distinguished orator may have been engaged by the Sansevero family with the specific intention (formally secondary, though by no means incidental) of facilitating the acquisition of a portion of the saint’s relics. An ambition which Paolo, Giovan Francesco, and Raimondo di Sangro evidently failed to fulfil.
Despite the absence of the coveted relics, the ‘arched oval reliquary’ still visible in the altar of Sant’Oderisio (Inventario 1771, fol. 78r; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 134) may plausibly have been intended to display the desired relic rather than the Blessed Sacrament. The two monuments, enriched with gilded copper inserts, traces of which remain on the bronze bands crossing the cushions ‘of amethyst’ (Inventario 1771, fol. 79r; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 135), now lack several attributes. The stone elements, however, survive: the ‘rich and vibrant still life of the cardinal’s hat beside the porphyry cushion, rendered with strong pictorial sensitivity’, in _Sant’Oderisio _(Picone 1959, p. 96), and the marble garland of roses crowning the head of Santa Rosalia (on the saint’s iconography, cf. Le estasi di santa Rosalia 2024). One of the putti flanking Sant’Oderisio no longer bears ‘the crozier, insignia of the said saint’ (Inventario 1771, fol. 79r; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 135); similarly, in the Santa Rosalia, the two putti, ‘one of whom holds a discipline and the other a lily’ (Inventario 1771, fol. 125r; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 152), have lost their attributes, most likely originally from gilded metal alloys, only partially installed by 1771. It is therefore unsurprising that in that year, in the ‘room where Don Gennaro Tibet resides’, procurator of the Prince of Sansevero, there was ‘a gilded copper mitre with imitation stones for Sant’Odorisio’ (Inventario 1771, fol. 9v; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 119; see also Colapietra 1986, p. 76, note 8).
Essential bibliography on the work
Origlia Paolino Giangiuseppe, Istoria dello Studio di Napoli…, II, Naples, Giovanni di Simone, 1754, p. 365.
Breve nota di quel che si vede in casa del principe di Sansevero don Raimondo di Sangro nella città di Napoli, [Naples] 1769, 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. 9v, 78r–79r, 125r–126r.
Ratti Carlo Giuseppe, Delle vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti genovesi. Tomo secondo… in continuazione dell’opera di Raffaello Soprani, Genoa, Casamara dalle cinque lampade, 1769, p. 308.
Sarnelli Pompeo, Nuova guida de’ forestieri…, Naples, Saverio Rossi, 1772, p. 132.
Sigismondo Giuseppe, Descrizione della città di Napoli e suoi borghi, II, [Naples,] Terres, 1788, p. 36.
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, pp. 87–88.
D’Ambra Raffaele, de Lauzières Achille, Un mese a Napoli. Descrizione della città di Napoli e delle sue vicinanze divisa in XXX giornate…, I–III, Naples 1855–1857, I, 1855, p. 223.
Celano Carlo, Notizie del bello, dell’antico e del curioso della città di Napoli… Con aggiunzioni de’ più notabili miglioramenti posteriori fino al presente, estratti dalla storia de’ monumenti e dalle memorie di eruditi scrittori napolitani, Giovanni Battista Chiarini (ed.), III, Naples 1858, p. 450.
Labò Mario, ‘Queirolo Francesco’, in Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXVII, Leipzig 1933, p. 504.
Riccoboni Alberto, ‘Sculture inedite di Antonio Corradini’, in Arte Veneta, VI, 1952, pp. 151–156, esp. p. 155.
Canova Antonio, I quaderni di viaggio (1779–1780), Elena Bassi (ed.), Venice–Rome 1959, pp. 76–77.
Picone Marina, La Cappella Sansevero, Naples 1959, pp. 36, 83–84, 95–96, figs. 16–17.
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. 76, note 8.
de Sangro Oderisio, Raimondo de Sangro e la Cappella Sansevero, Rome 1991, pp. 170–172, nos. 8–9.
Cioffi Rosanna, La Cappella Sansevero. Arte barocca e ideologia massonica, first edition: Salerno 1987; edition cited: Salerno 1994, pp. 40–41, 60–61, 154–155, note 77 (nos. 8, 16), figs. 36–37.
Ratti Carlo Giuseppe, Storia de’ pittori e scultori et architetti liguri e de’ forestieri che in Genova operarono: secondo il manoscritto del 1762, Maurizia Migliorini (ed.), Genoa 1997, p. 215.
Nappi Eduardo, Dai numeri la verità. Nuovi documenti sulla famiglia, i palazzi e la Cappella dei Sansevero, Naples 2010, pp. 101–103.
Attanasio Sergio, In casa del Principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, pp. 44, 119, 134–135, 151–152.
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, XXXIV cycle from the Federico II University of Naples, under supervisors Francesco Caglioti and Bianca de Divitiis, academic year 2021–2022, esp. pp. 506–507.
Comparative bibliography
Campanile Filiberto, L’historia dell’illustrissima famiglia Di Sangro, Naples, Tarquinio Longo, 1615, pp. 4–5.
Arminio Monforte Fulgenzio, L’anno della grazia. Discorso per santa Rosalia la reale vergine e protettrice di Palermo, consagrato all’illustrissimo suo Senato…, Palermo, Pietro dell’Isola, 1662.
Arminio Monforte Fulgenzio, Il trionfo del dolore. Funerali per la illustrissima ed eccellentissima signora… donna Giovanna di Sangro dei Marchesi di San Lucido, prencipessa di San Severo, celebrati in Torremaggiore nella chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine… l’anno 1674, Naples, Girolamo Fasulo, 1674, pp. 232–275.
Parrino Donato Antonio, Napoli città nobilissima, antica e fedelissima…, I, Naples, Parrino, 1700, p. 118.
De Blasi Nicola, ‘Arminio Monforte, Fulgenzio’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 4, Rome 1962, online: .
Bottero Carlo, I conventuali riformati italiani, 1557–1670, II, Insediamenti e appendici, Padua 2008, p. 540.
Melchionna Antonio, Fulgenzio Arminio. Ritratto di un agostiniano irpino dell’epoca barocca, Atripalda 2012.
Coiro Luigi, ‘Aniello Perrone, Raimondo De Dominici e il ‘teatro’ per la canonizzazione di San Pasquale Baylon a Santa Lucia al Monte (1691)’, in Napoli nobilissima, ser. VI, IV, 2013, 5–6, pp. 205–218, esp. 210.
Scalisi Lina, ‘Le reliquie di Rosalia. Disegni, ambizioni, devozioni di un culto barocco’, in Mezzogiorno prodigioso. Ricerche sul miracolo nel Meridione d’Italia dell’età moderna, Giulio Sodano (ed.), Palermo 2023, pp. 185–201.
Le estasi di Santa Rosalia. Antoon van Dyck, Pietro Novelli, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, exhibition catalogue Maria Concetta Di Natale (ed.) (Palermo, Pinacoteca di Villa Zito, 24 February – 19 May 2024), Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2024.
DOI: 10.82049/CATALOGO07