Art museum
Museo Cappella Sansevero
1,008 locals recommend,
Location
19/21 Via Francesco de Sanctis
Napoli, Campania
Tips from locals
One of Naples' most visited chapels, the Capella Sansevero is home to the Veiled Christ, considered to be one of the world's most remarkable sculptures.
Amazing piece of art, 10 min by feet from the Degas flat, that you have to see! The visit is short but unfortunately sometimes you will find long waiting lines at the entrance.
Via Francesco De Sanctis, 19/21 - Naples, Opening hours: from 9.30 am to 6.00 pm - except on Tuesday which is closed. Admission 7 euros www.museosansevero.it/
Located in the heart of the ancient center of Naples, the Museo Cappella Sansevero is a jewel of the international artistic heritage. Baroque creativity and dynastic pride, beauty and mystery intertwine, creating here a unique atmosphere, almost out of time. Among masterpieces such as the famous Veiled Christ, whose image has traveled around the world for the prodigious “weaving” of the marble veil, marvels of virtuosity such as Disillusion and enigmatic presences such as anatomical machines, the Sansevero Chapel represents one of the most unique monuments that human ingenuity has ever conceived. A noble mausoleum, an initiatory temple in which the multifaceted personality of its brilliant creator: Raimondo di Sangro, seventh Prince of Sansevero, is wonderfully transfused. Located in the center of the nave of the Sansevero Chapel, the veiled Christ is one of the most famous and evocative works in the world. In the intention of the client, the statue had to be executed by Antonio Corradini, who had already carved modesty for the prince. However, Corradini died in 1752 and had time to finish only a terracotta sketch of the Christ, now preserved in the Museum of San Martino. So it was that Raimondo di Sangro commissioned a young Neapolitan artist, Giuseppe Sanmartino, to create "a life-size carved marble statue, representing Our Lord Jesus Christ dead, covered by a transparent shroud made from the same block as the statue". Sanmartino took little account of the previous sketch of the Venetian sculptor. As in Modesty, even in the veiled Christ the original stylistic message is in the veil, but the throbbing and late-Baroque sentiments of Sanmartino give the shroud a movement and meaning very distant from the Corradinian canons. The modern sensibility of the artist sculpts, strikes the lifeless body, which the soft coulters collect mercifully, on which the tormented, convulsive rhythms of the folds of the veil affect a deep suffering, as if the pitiful covering made the poor even more bare and exposed limbs, even more inexorable and precise, the lines of the tortured body. The swollen and still throbbing vein on the forehead, the piercing of the nails on the feet and on the thin hands, the hollowed and relaxed rib at last in liberating death are the sign of an intense search that does not give space to preciousness or school fees, even when the sculptor "embroider" meticulously the edges of the shroud or dwell on the instruments of the Passion placed at the feet of the Christ. The art of Sanmartino is resolved here in a dramatic evocation, which makes the suffering of Christ the symbol of destiny and redemption of the entire humanity. From Casa Carmela it can be reached in less than 15 minutes walking.
Located in the heart of the ancient center of Naples, the Museo Cappella Sansevero is a jewel of the international artistic heritage. Baroque creativity and dynastic pride, beauty and mystery intertwine, creating here a unique atmosphere, almost out of time. Among masterpieces such as the famous Vei…