The Prince of Sansevero Myth

Around the figure of Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, arose veritable myths even during his lifetime. Certainly, di Sangro fuelled them, writing in his Lettera Apologetica about the “products of his wonderful genius”, sending letters on the discovery of a “perpetual flame” to great academics and opening the doors of his palace to European travellers. Anxious to be recognised as an inventor of the most varied discoveries of the techniques and the arts, but at the same time reluctant to reveal their formulae or secret mechanisms, he caused curiosity and admiration among his contemporaries. If to this we add the nobility of his birth, the fame of his endless culture, his role as Grand Master of the Free Masons and the prohibition of the Lettera Apologetica by the Church, it will become clear how Raimondo di Sangro became a symbol, enigmatic but powerful, of the intellectual ferment and the dream of greatness of his generation.

In 1752, the censors of the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books recognised in him “a singular, marvellous, one might say prodigious genius”. Two years later, Giangiuseppe Origlia concluded the biography of Sansevero describing him as “one of those heroes, which nature sometimes deigns to produce to extol her greatness”. Antonio Genovesi recalls him as “a man versed in all that is great and glorious”, a description very similar to that found on di Sangro’s funeral plaque (conceived in 1759), according to which he was an “extraordinary man, gifted in all he dared to undertake”, as well as being a “famous investigator into the most recondite mysteries of Nature”. After meeting the Prince, the astronomer de Lalande wrote in his travel diary that he “wasn’t an academic, but an entire academy”. Twenty years after the death of di Sangro, Giuseppe Maria Galanti – a disciple of Genovesi – dedicated a whole chapter of the Short description of Naples to him to celebrate “the greatness of his genius”, while the Historical-critical essay on typography in the Kingdom of Naples (1793) by Lorenzo Giustiniani exalted the exceptional quality of the publications produced by the press at the Palazzo Sansevero. At the turn of the following century, among the Poetic Portraits of Carlantonio de Rosa di Villarosa appears a sonnet dedicated to Raimondo di Sangro. After a period of relative obscurity, at the end of the nineteenth century, the myth of the Prince came once more to the fore, thanks to writers of the calibre of Luigi Capuana, Salavatore di Giacomo and Benedetto Croce, who dedicated beautiful pages to his extraordinary genius.

The inventions, the subjects of his books, the clandestine reprinting of a mysterious work like the Count of Gabalis and, especially, the complex and veiled symbology of the Sansevero Chapel have guaranteed Raimondo di Sangro a place of honour in the history of esoteric studies. Thus, many twentieth-century essays on the initiatic tradition name him. He is so fascinating that, from the mid-twentieth century, various theories have evolved on how to interpret – sometimes improbably – the iconography of the Chapel and the message contained in his works or suggested by his experimentation. At the same time, the academic world has began a documented rereading of his activity, placing it in the broader context of the Neapolitan and European cultural growth in the eighteenth century. One recalls the important studies by the historian Vincenzo Ferrone, the art historian Rosanna Cioffi, and the recent commentated and annotated editions of di Sangro’s works, edited by Leen Spruit for the alóς publishing house.

Over the last decades, the myth of the Prince of Sansevero has also spread thanks to the mass media, literature and art. It is no longer possible to count the documentaries made by companies from all over the world, which have illustrated the alchemic-Masonic path of the Sansevero Chapel and the personality of its patron. From the artistic and literary point of view, Feliciano de Cenzo composed a poem in Neapolitan in 1977, dedicating it to Raimondo di Sangro and his Chapel, while in 1988 Alessandro Coletti wrote a biography of the Prince in novel form. An issue of the comic Martin Mystère and a series of childrens’ books published by Colonnese have been based on Sansevero. The American writer Nathan Gelb used the Prince of Sansevero as the “detective” in a series of romans noirs published in Italy by Sperling & Kupfer (the first of which came out in 2006). Lello Esposito, an artist of international fame, did a portrait of the Prince in one of his most famous paintings, while in 2008, a work group under Maestro Roberto De Simone put on a musical/theatrical performance in memory of Raimondo di Sangro.

Alongside the “cultured myth” of Raimondo di Sangro, over the centuries a multitude of legends on the Sansevero Chapel and its original patron have sprung up. The noisy underground workshops of Palazzo Sansevero, which never fall silent even at night, and gave off mysterious light, the sensational inventions they produced, amazing those who observed them, must have ignited the fervid popular imagination of the Neapolitans, and especially those who lived in the narrow alleyways of the ancient city centre. The words of Salvatore Di Giacomo splendidly recreate the atmosphere which stimulated the imagination of passers by in the eighteenth century. “Stray Flames, infernal light – the people said – moved behind the enormous windows which look from the ground floor onto Vico Sansevero […]. The flames would disappear, darkening once more, and there, dull, prolonged sounds could be heard inside the building. From time to time, in the silence of the night, what sounded like the clank of an anvil being struck with a heavy hammer could be heard, or the paving stones of the alleyway would shake as if at the arrival of some huge invisible carriage”. Thus, Benedetto Croce recalls how, “for the poor people from the streets near the di Sangro Chapel”, the Prince of Sansevero was “the Neapolitan incarnation of Dr Faustus […] who made a pact with the devil, and almost became a devil himself, to master the most secret mysteries of nature”.

Here are a number of the misdeeds and wonders which, according to the so-called “black legend”, the Prince of Sansevero is supposed to have performed. “He had two of his servants killed” to “strangely embalm their bodies” (the reference is to the Anatomical Machines). “He killed […] no fewer than seven cardinals” to obtain from their bones and from their skin seven chairs. He blinded Giuseppe Sanmartino, creator of the Veiled Christ, so he could “never more produce so extraordinary a sculpture for anyone else”. “He reduced marble and metals to dust” and “went to sea in his carriage and horses […] without wetting the wheels”. About Sanmartino’s masterpiece, then, arose what is presumably the most widespread and unshakeable of the legends, according to which the Prince is said to have “marblised” the veil of the Christ using a an alchemic procedure.

Another fantastic story regards the circumstances of the death of the Prince of Sansevero, who, for Neapolitans, is the “Prince” by definition. Croce, once again, tells the story. “When he felt that death was not far away, he arranged his resurrection, and had himself cut to bits by a black slave, and the pieces put in a chest, from which he would leap out in complete health at the appointed time. But the family […] looked for the chest, and opened it before time, while the parts of the body were still in the process of joining up, and the Prince, as if woken from sleep, tried to get up, but fell back immediately, with the scream of a damned man”.

These and many other legends are still being told, and new ones continue to be born. It is enough to listen to visitors to the Sansevero Chapel to hear the most bizarre stories about Raimondo di Sangro and the works he commissioned, and it is not rare to find passers-by making the sign of the cross in front of the Palazzo Sansevero to ward off the evil spells of the feared and “diabolical” Prince. There are even those who tell stories of “close encounters” with the spirit of Raimondo di Sangro. It is also thanks to these curious stories that in Naples survives – distorted, but solid – the memory of the Prince of Sansevero.