The Last Night of the Prince of Sansevero, from February 25th at the Pozzo e il Pendolo

The last hours of the great necromancer who wanted to live twice, the mystery of his death in a disturbing and disconcerting hypothesis at the same time.

The incredible and sad story of Raimondo de Sangro will come to life on Saturday 25 February 2023 at 21.00:26 pm (repeated on Sunday XNUMX), on the stage of the Pozzo e il Pendolo in Naples in the show L'ultima notte del Principe di Sansevero, with Marco Palumbo and Andrea De Rosa, conceived and staged by Annamaria Russo.

Raimondo de Sangro, Prince of Sansevero died on March 22, 1771, of natural causes. The legend of his death and resurrection is cited in various versions by the major writers of the nineteenth century. One version says that the Prince, fascinated by alchemy, was convinced that he had found a way to become immortal thanks to some elixirs with a secret recipe.

It is the night of March 22, 1771, in which the greatest scholar, philosopher and alchemist of Naples will die. Raimondo de Sangro, the Prince of Sansevero, is bent over his work table, cluttered with stills, vials and a chalice.

Behind him, a shadow, the profile of Giuseppe Sanmartino, the man who sculpted the Veiled Christ. It is the night of revelations, of secrets.

The Prince of Sansevero and Giuseppe Sanmartino met at a court party at the end of 1752. When the Prince met him for the first time, the sculptor was practically unknown.

According to one of his major biographers, Elio Catello, Sanmartino had, up to that point, only made one commission for the city of Monopoli. The meeting with Raimondo de Sangro therefore marked a turning point in the young man's life.

Of course, the reasons why the Prince decided to entrust the Veiled Christ to such an unknown artist are still unclear. Corradini and the entire “school” of sculptors that revolved around the chapel and the Prince had worked on the work, or rather on the project for the work. With a surprise move, however, Don Raimondo decided to entrust the work to Sanmartino, who in 1753 was only thirty-three years old.

The notarial document with which Sansevero “frames” Sanmartino is also historically proven. Nothing, however, is known about the reason why the sculptor decided to abandon the Prince immediately after the creation of the Veiled Christ. Only some legends indicate a series of mysterious meetings between the two men.

The installation was born from the hypothesis of a last secret meeting between the two men, whose lives were tied by the indestructible thread of art: a showdown between two enormous personalities, a ruthless game of chess in which death or immortality are the stakes.