The Museo Cappella Sansevero, in collaboration with Off Gallery, presents “HARAVEC | The experiments of the Prince of Sansevero in the illustrations of Daniela Pergreffi”, which opens to the public on Wednesday 31 January.
The event, which opens to the public in the run-up to the birthday of Raimondo di Sangro VII, Prince of Sansevero (Torremaggiore, 30 January 1710 – Naples, 22 March 1771), celebrates the genius of the great eighteenth-century thinker, unprejudiced and fascinating, a tireless experimenter, an outsider intellectual, who lived with his ideas in an era so different and distant from the current one, but which, nevertheless, seems to be placed in the closest proximity to our time.
Fourteen color plates created with the aim of offering, for the first time, a visual representation of the main experiments of the Prince of Sansevero and to explore in an unprecedented way the ingenious inventions of Raimondo di Sangro: the miracle drugs, the artificial gems, the colored glass, the perpetual light, the reproduction of the miracle of San Gennaro and many others.
The exhibition, curated by the director of the Museo Cappella Sansevero, Maria Alessandra Masucci, is hosted in the Off Gallery space in via Raimondo di Sangro 20 (opposite the side entrance of the Cappella Sansevero).
At the same time, inside the nave of the Sansevero Chapel, the illustration of the maritime carriage will be exhibited, alongside the original eighteenth-century engraving.
The collaboration with Off Gallery, a space dedicated to contemporary art curated by Beniamino Manferlotti, confirms the open spirit of the Museo Cappella Sansevero in promoting new artistic projects that involve the territory and its most dynamic cultural realities.
In addition to being the creator of the iconographic project of the chapel of the same name and the patron of the masterpieces kept there, the Prince of Sansevero was in fact a man of letters, a clandestine publisher, the first Grand Master of Neapolitan Freemasonry, but above all a prolific inventor, a Haravec, as he defined himself in his main literary work, using the ancient language of the Incas of pre-Columbian Peru: “The name HARAVEC is appropriate for the Author, which, if we rigorously examine its meaning, is the same as INVENTOR” (from the “Apologetic Letter of the Academic Exercise of the Crusca containing the Defense of the book entitled Letters of a Peruvian Woman in Respect of the Supposition of the Quipu Written to the Duchess of S**** and Published by Her”, Naples 1750).
Inside the basement of his palace, in Largo San Domenico Maggiore, the prince experimented in the most disparate fields of science and art: from chemistry to hydrostatics, from typography to mechanics, from pyrotechnics to medicine. However, his esoteric conception of knowledge meant that almost all the “secrets” of his inventions – as Giuseppe Maria Galanti wrote in 1792 – “either died with him, or lie unknown in some corner of his house”.
In fact, due to the lack of material evidence, to find information on the multifaceted experimental activity of Raimondo di Sangro, it is necessary to draw on literary and archival sources.
Daniela Pergreffi, who was commissioned by the Museo Cappella Sansevero to create the 14 illustrations, had already confronted the complex personality of Raimondo di Sangro in the past, for the creation of the graphic novel Il segreto della Fenice (alós, 2017).
Pergreffi's work began with the study of historical documents. The absence of iconographic references, sketches or drawings made her mission complex and intriguing in understanding the technologies and procedures hidden behind the wonders described in the texts.
Through his particular method, which mixes manual signs with imprints of everyday objects (keys, bolts, caps) and recycled materials, the artist creates images characterised by a dreamlike atmosphere, fuelling the legendary aura that surrounds the figure of the prince and places him between History and Myth.
The choice of the language of illustration is dictated by the desire to also address the younger generations.
On the occasion of the exhibition, in fact, the Museum will dedicate two days to education with special visits for school groups: students will be accompanied on a closed-door visit to the Sansevero Chapel and the Off Gallery, to discover the prince's experiments.
Educational visits, which will be held on Tuesday 20 February and Tuesday 27 February, can be booked through the Museum website.
The exhibition will be open to the public from January 31st to March 4th, and can be visited: for the first week from Wednesday January 31st to Monday February 5th; from the following week it will be open from Friday to Monday (from 9:30 to 18:30).
Free entrance to the Off Gallery (via Raimondo di Sangro, 20).
Paid entrance with mandatory reservation at the Museo Cappella Sansevero – info and rates on www.museosansevero.it.
Daniela Pergreffi
Emiliana, adopted by Naples, has always drawn, favoring paper and other recycled materials. She illustrates for publishers in Italy and abroad, collaborates with Corriere della Sera and its inserts, exhibits her graphic and pictorial works in solo and group exhibitions. In 2015 she was invited to exhibit at the Italian Cultural Institute in Warsaw. Some of her works have been acquired by the Hilton Hotel in Naples and placed in suites and lobbies. She is the interpreter of the city of Naples in the recent project of Atlanti Babelici for the Biblioteca Errante del Mediterraneo. She teaches Illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples.
OFF Gallery
In the heart of the ancient center of Naples, a stone's throw from the Cappella Sansevero, OFF Gallery was born in 2018 from an idea by Beniamino Manferlotti, first an art lover and collector, then a gallery owner. A Greek column, discovered almost by chance inside, welcomes the visitor to a place with a strong character, full of memories and suggestions, where the past that emerges welcomes the contemporary artists on display with surprising indulgence. In 2022, a new space was born, a few steps from the first, which offers a daily dialogue with the public and allows for other points of view and other site-specific projects.
Article published on 26 January 2024 - 18:03
