A work by Giuseppe Sammartino, the author of the Veiled Christ, discovered at the Palace of Caserta

Important discovery at the Royal Palace of Caserta, during work on the reorganization of some service spaces, not open to the public and intended for storage. Precisely from these storerooms and their rearrangement, wanted by the Museums Directorate of the Ministry of Culture in view of the refurbishment of the Royal Apartments, a soft stone sculpture, with pinkish veins, depicting a sleeping child, apparently eighteenth-century, has re-emerged. A work of great beauty and very high quality, so much so that it led the director of the Reggia, Tiziana Maffei, to ask the institute’s technicians to study the work in order to identify the possible author. The name that has been put forward by scholars is that of Giuseppe Sammartino (Naples, 1720 - 1793), author of the Veiled Christ that stands at the center of the Sansevero Chapel in the heart of the city.

Indeed, eighteenth-century chronicles recount that, in 1775, at the birth of Charles Titus of Bourbon-Naples, the eldest male child of the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, and his consort Maria Caroline of Austria, the queen, for grace received, wanted to have a life-size portrait of the Royal Infant, heir to the throne of Naples, made, which was supposed to ensure the dynastic continuity of the Bourbons in the Neapolitan kingdom. The existence of Charles Titus was unfortunately unfortunate: the little boy in fact died prematurely, before he was four years old, after contracting smallpox. The portrait commissioned by Maria Carolina was to be translated into silver to be donated, as a votive offering, to the ancient Neapolitan convent of St. Francis of Paola, a saint to whom the queen was very devoted. Given the importance of the commission, Maria Carolina wanted the portrait to be executed by the Kingdom’s leading sculptor, Giuseppe Sanmartino, who had become an artist of renown and success precisely after having created the Veiled Christ for the Neapolitan Chapel of Raimondo de Sangro, Prince of Sansevero.

Research that had been done as part of studies on Sammartino had ascertained the work’s existence but considered it lost. It is likely that, along with this stone model, there was also another one in terracotta, from which the silver casting would later be taken. In addition to the stylistic comparison with some statues made for several Neapolitan churches, the confirmation of the attribution of the small sculpture to Sanmartino comes from reading the ancient post-unification inventories of the Royal Palace of Caserta, which report, next to the description of the statue as a Sleeping Child, the very name of Sammartino. The sculpture, which can thus be identified as the portrait of the Royal Infante Charles Titus of Bourbon, appears, in fact, to have been in the collections of the Reggia di Caserta since at least 1879, the year to which an inventory dates in which the sculpture is mentioned alongside the name of Giuseppe Sammartino. The sculptor already had contacts with the Bourbon court, was famous for the Veiled Christ made for the prince of Sansevero, Raimondo di Sangro, and was named for this very background. The results of initial research on the sculpture, conducted by Valeria Di Fratta, are being published.

Following the discovery there will be further in-depth studies as well as a restoration intervention, from which the Royal Palace of Caserta expects to obtain results that will be able to give interesting information about both the work and its author. The restoration work will be carried out as part of the Care and Management of Collections, Education and Research Area of the Royal Palace of Caserta, coordinated by Giuseppe Graziano, and will be carried out within the Restoration Laboratories of the Royal Palace of Caserta by Anna Manzone, supported by specific advice from a restorer with 30 years’ experience in the field, made possible thanks to the contribution of the Friends of the Royal Palace of Caserta Association. The intervention, the institute points out, will take place in compliance with the criteria of minimal invasiveness; dirt present on the entire marble surface, characterized by dust mixed with wax, will be removed. With the collaboration of the University of Naples Federico II, and specifically the Department of Chemical Sciences and Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences, diagnostic investigations will be carried out that will better clarify the methodology to be used during the cleaning and will be useful in identifying the type of marble used by the artist and the physical and biological degradation present. The design phase has already begun; work will be completed in December.

The discovery was was presented this morning during a press conference in the Art Meeting Room of the Royal Apartments at which Tiziana Maffei, director of the Royal Palace of Caserta, Massimo Osanna, MiC Museums General Director, Giuseppe Oreste Graziano, coordinator area care and management of collections, education and research of the Royal Palace of Caserta, spoke, Valeria Di Fratta, Promotion and Communication Officer of the Royal Palace of Caserta, Anna Manzone, Restoration Conservator Officer of the Royal Palace of Caserta, Paolo Provitera, President of the Friends of the Royal Palace, Italo Scaietta, President of the Italian Federation of Friends of Museums and Vice President of the World Federation of Friends of Museums. For one day only, on Oct. 3, which coincides with the 18th National Friends of Museums Day, the Portrait of the Royal Infant Charles Titus of Bourbon will be on display in the Palatine Chapel of the Royal Palace of Caserta. At the end of the restoration, the work will be presented to the public in an exhibition to be held at the Royal Palace of Caserta over the Christmas period.

The statements

“The real theme,” said director Tiziana Maffei, “is the narrative of these goods that we guard, material goods that reveal very complex systems of relationships. In this operation there is also the issue of the care and conservation of the asset itself: this sculpture (from the investigations we have to figure out what stone it is made of) has involved the collections care and management sector to start an activity that is not of in-depth restoration, but of cleaning and deepening. And then there is the question of how to enhance the object, an operation that in the such a large size of our palace becomes very difficult: so we thought of doing a focus with an exhibition in the Christmas period, keeping in mind an aspect that we must never forget. The Bourbon collections are dispersed among different institutions, so the theme is also to delve into this collection as a whole, and then, thanks to forms of collaboration that we are already activating, to initiate operations of reinterpretation and probably (I hope) also of moving, albeit temporarily, the works in order to reconstruct the sense of this place. The Royal Palace of Caserta is a grand expression of a visionary like King Charles, who with this place had to give a sense of the prestige of the Bourbon kingdom.”

“I am convinced that one of our efforts should be to enhance the value of our repositories,” said MiC director general of museums Massimo Osanna. “I reiterate the importance of working together on the valorization of the repositories, meaning our 360-degree commitment: not only the census of our repositories (often many of our properties are not even inventoried or catalogued), but beyond this basic project fundamental is the aspect of valorization, so bringing to light what is now precluded from public enjoyment, and what is happening in Caserta is a best practice. A sculpture of this level by Sammartino, hidden in storage and forgotten for decades, finally has a new life and a beautiful exhibition project.”

“One day Director Maffei asked me to come to the repository to see a sculpture that seemed to her to be of particular artistic merit,” said Valeria Di Fratta. “I quite excitedly went with her, accompanied her, and the sight of this sculpture was dazzling to me, because it immediately seemed to me that there was so much quality that needed to be enhanced. I then went with the research and at first glance it immediately seemed to me that the author of this sculpture should be traced among the major representatives of 18th-century Neapolitan sculpture. The first name that came to mind was that of Giuseppe Sammartino, precisely because this sculpture, made of a soft stone with pinkish veins with this effect of softness and also with this expressiveness that belongs to Giuseppe Sammartino’s sculpture, strongly recalled him. Sammartino has been much studied by various Neapolitan scholars: consulting the artist’s catalog raisonné, it emerged that the documents listed a sculpture considered lost the model of Crown Prince Charles Titus of Bourbon, the first male child of Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina. The news was most curious, and Elio Catello, who had reconstructed Giuseppe Sammartino’s monograph, derived this information from ancient chronicles, and in particular from the Gazzetta Universale of 1775, the year in which the crown prince was born. A sort of dispatch in which the nations were informed of this birth.” The sculpture was initially mistaken for a baby Jesus, despite having no attributes to suggest such a subject. “It is neither more nor less than a life-size portrait of a very sweet sleeping infant. Stylistic comparisons have since strengthened this attribution: I cite, among those that could be recalled, the holding angels of the funeral monument of Philip of Bourbon, uncle of Charles Titus, and further confirmation comes from reading the post-unification inventories of the Royal Palace of Caserta.”

“The restoration,” said Anna Manzone, “will be preceded by diagnostic investigations, essential for a cognitive restoration, for which the Federico II University of Naples will help us. From the analyses we will have a clear vision of the texture of the work: we see this light-colored stone with pinkish veins that could be an alabaster of a calcareous nature as well as of a chalky nature, which will also determine the way in which the cleaning will be conducted, a very delicate phase in which we should not make mistakes. The investigations will clarify the nature of the stone, the nature of the degradation present (both physical and biological): there are stains at the waxes applied in the past, there is a deposit of dirt (dust mixed with waxes), and there are small micro-fractures that will be analyzed specifically, at the left manino there is an old gluing of which we have not found the origin, applied with old glues that later yellowed and became harmful to the work. The restoration will not be invasive: the minimal intervention that the work needs to maintain itself over time and not degrade will be carried out, but also as a moment of knowledge. Restoration intervention, as Cesare Brandi said, is precisely the first moment of collective knowledge of a work.”

A work by Giuseppe Sammartino, the author of the Veiled Christ, discovered at the Palace of Caserta

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