CAPPELLA SANSEVERO Naples, Italy

The Cappella Sansevero (also known as the Cappella Sansevero de' Sangri or Pietatella) is a chapel located on Via Francesco de Sanctis 19, just northwest of the church of San Domenico Maggiore, in the historic center of Naples, Italy. The chapel is more properly named the Chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà. It contains works of Rococo art by some of the leading Italian artists of the 18th century.

The chapel houses almost thirty works of art, among which are three particular sculptures of note. These marble statues are emblematic of the love of decoration in the Rococo period and their depiction of translucent veils represent remarkable artistic achievement. The 1753 Christ Veiled under a Shroud (also called Veiled Christ), by Giuseppe Sanmartino, shows the influence of the veiled Modesty.

HIGH ALTAR

Francesco Celebrano and Paolo Persico, seventeen-sixties.

The high relief, or marble picture, of the Deposition was carved by Francesco Celebrano, but it had been entrusted to Queirolo (and Corradini had already made a clay model). This work, considered by critics to be the best of Celebrano, is a unique exemplar in Naples of a high relief on a high altar, even if the technique can be found in the city in various other contexts.

Celebrano shows his skill by combining late-baroque elements with the rich and fertile elements of the Depositions of the seventeenth century in the Neapolitan area and makes the scene remarkably complex, narratively dramatic, and almost constrained in the limited spaces, including the tabernacle inserted within a shroud supported by two putti and closed by the metal face of Christ.

While the photography is dramatic....the in person experience is beyond exhilaration. This is a MUST SEE on a trip to Naples.