Unlike cataloguing work, which generally concerns museum collections, cataloguing the artistic heritage of the Sansevero Chapel means engaging with the history of works that are exceptionally anchored to their original context. It is therefore impossible to address the decorative undertakings of the Di Sangro family chapel without considering their genetic ties with the monumental space of which they form part, as well as the role and significance they assume within the coherent renovation project begun by Prince Raimondo from the 1740s onwards.
The inviolability – material and otherwise – of this self-contained world has providentially spared the works inside the Chapel from being drawn into the contemporary exhibition circuit. And if it is true, as Francis Haskell (2000) warned, that exhibition catalogues proliferate at the expense of scholarly monographs on artists and museum collections, this may in part explain the difficulty that, prior to this publication, would have been encountered in finding even an up-to-date entry on the Cristo velato, the most celebrated marble in the Chapel, and, indeed, in the entire sculptural tradition of southern Italy. Then again, the historiographical tradition concerning the Sansevero mausoleum, generous as it may be in terms of its results and methods, has often favoured an essayistic treatment of historical-documentary or interpretative interest over the demands of scholarly cataloguing, demands to which the pioneering volume by Marina Causa Picone (1959) and, later, the monograph by Oderisio de Sangro (1991) both courageously attempted to respond. The catalogues of the works of two of the main protagonists of the Sansevero Chapel, Antonio Corradini and Giuseppe Sanmartino, compiled by Bruno Cogo and Elio Catello respectively, were published between twenty and thirty years ago; studies of such breadth are still lacking for artists such as Francesco Queirolo and Francesco Celebrano, figures no less central to the monument’s eighteenth-century history.
This digital catalogue project, launched in 2023 on the initiative of the President, Maria Alessandra Masucci, grew out of an awareness of the need for a systematic scholarly cataloguing of the Sansevero Chapel Museum’s artistic heritage, as well as a desire to make it as widely accessible as possible. Together with Masucci, we thought it necessary not only to identify scholars to entrust with preparing the catalogue entries, but also – and above all – to set up a genuine research group capable of working in close collaboration and sharing methods, ideas, and materials throughout the undertaking.
I was therefore able to co-ordinate the work of researchers long engaged in reconstituting the culture of the Southern Baroque: Luigi Coiro, Sabrina Iorio, Eleonora Loiodice, Augusto Russo, and Mariano Saggiomo, to whom I express my gratitude for their generous commitment to this project.
The catalogue’s thirty-one essay entries, accompanied by ultra-high-resolution photographs produced specifically for this publication by Haltadefinizione S.r.l., represent not only an indispensable synthesis (as noted above) of the long and fruitful historiographical tradition of the Sansevero Chapel but also the product of new research conducted during the cataloguing process. The identification of new documentary sources in the Diocesan Historical Archive of Naples has shed light on the foundation of the church of Santa Maria della Pietà and its artistic topography prior to Raimondo’s renovatio. Being able to reconstruct the proper connections between the works and documents has also made it possible to restore to Michelangelo Naccherino the tomb of Paolo di Sangro, second Prince of Sansevero, and the statue of Amor divino that originally adorned it. The series of nineteenth-century engravings by Franz Wenzel then aided understanding of the arrangement of several of the Chapel’s funerary monuments prior to the collapse of the counter-façade in 1889.
Regarding the eighteenth-century decorative phase, among other things that have still received insufficient attention are the diary entries that the Lombard sculptor Donato Andrea Fantoni dedicated to the most celebrated monuments of the Di Sangro mausoleum during his visit to Naples in 1769. Lastly, the significance that the Roman Baroque may have had for Raimondo’s iconographic programme, shaped by his experience as a pupil of the Jesuits in Rome from 1720 to 1730, has become increasingly apparent: from Celebrano’s Compianto to Sanmartino’s Cristo velato, from Queirolo’s Disinganno to the labyrinthine floor, from the vault painted by Francesco Maria Russo to the decorative motifs enriching the tombs commissioned by the Prince.
This work would not have been possible without the trust and generous encouragement of Maria Alessandra Masucci and the constant collaboration of the staff of the Sansevero Chapel Museum, Mariagrazia de Gaetano in particular. We are also grateful to Andrea Bacchi, Francesco Caglioti, Fabrizio Masucci, and Riccardo Naldi for the help they gave us in various ways.
Gianluca Forgione