Tiziana Cignarelli

When this sculpture was unveiled in 1753, people refused to believe it was made of marble. They were convinced the artist had used alchemy... The veil draped over the body of Christ was rendered with such impossible precision that the only explanation was that some chemical process had been used to turn a real cloth into stone. The sculptor was a 33-year-old Neapolitan named Giuseppe Sanmartino. He had carved the entire figure, including the veil, from a single block of white marble. We know this because the original commission documents survive, preserved in the Historical Archive of the Bank of Naples. A receipt signed by the patron, Prince Raimondo di Sangro, dated 16 December 1752, refers to "the statue of Our Lord in death covered by a veil also of marble." The patron himself only deepened the mystery: Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, was a Grand Master of the Neapolitan Masonic Lodge and a practicing alchemist... He had commissioned the sculpture for the Cappella Sansevero, his family chapel in the heart of Naples, a space he had spent his life transforming into one of the strangest interiors in Europe, filled with allegorical statues and symbols of esoteric knowledge. The legend that he had laid a real cloth over the figure and "marbleized" it through a secret chemical process took root almost immediately. And it has never fully died. But the truth is stranger than the legend. Sanmartino did this with a hammer and a chisel... Antonio Canova himself tried to buy the sculpture. According to tradition, when he was unable to, he said he would gladly have given ten years of his life to have produced something of similar perfection. The Marquis de Sade, passing through Naples, paused to praise "the folds, the finesse of the veil… the beauty, and the regularity of the overall proportions." The Veiled Christ has not left the city in over 270 years. To see it, you have to go there. I have, and I can tell you that no photograph prepares you for the moment you stand in front of it. Sculpture, at its highest, really is a kind of alchemy. The transformation of cold stone into real flesh. As Alexander Pope wrote: "Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm." I started this newsletter because human beings once made things that look impossible, and we have largely forgotten how. Every week, I share one of those stories. If that is something you would like to be part of, you can join 50,000 readers here: James-lucas.com/welcome If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.