The Veiled Christ is one of the most popular works of art in world tourism that has made the Sansevero Chapel Museum in Naples famous. A marble masterpiece of Neapolitan sculpture. Lying in the middle of the nave of the Sansevero Chapel, the Veiled Christ is a sculpture executed by Giuseppe Sanmartino in 1753 on commission of Raimondo di Sangro Prince of Sansevero. The sculpture represents the body of Jesus dead and covered by a shroud, a veil whose transparency is masterfully rendered by the skill of the sculptor.
The Veiled Christ: the magic of a masterpiece
Compared to the natural calm imprinted by humanistic and Renaissance art on the representation of the subject and its dynamism, here the movement of the subject is influenced by Baroque taste and is exalted by the veil. The soft, thin shroud gives the whole representation an extraordinary sense of mercy, which is enriched with pain thanks to the tormented folds of the veil which try to cover the profound suffering of the tortured body.
The peculiarity of the sculpture lies specifically in the realization of the shroud, carved from the same block of the statue, deceives the view to the point of making the realization incredible to Canova himself who tried
