💀 I Am Raimondo di Sangro VII Prince of Sansevero , and This Is the Story of My Life 🤫✨🕯️🩸
They call me Raimondo di Sangro, the seventh Prince of San Severo, but the world knows me by a darker title: the "Sorcerer Prince." I was born in Torremaggiore in 1710, in an age when the light of Reason was beginning to challenge the shadows of superstition. I was not destined for a life of idleness or courtly banalities. My weapon was not a brush, but alchemy, intellect, and forbidden science.
My father, a tormented man who fled his duties, left me to be raised under the discipline of the Jesuits in Rome. There, I mastered languages, fortification, and logic. But the answers I sought were not found in books approved by the Church. I craved the secrets of nature, the mechanics of life, and the mysteries of death.
Upon returning to Naples, I became a soldier, an inventor, and a Grand Master of Freemasonry. Naples was my kingdom, a theater vibrant with life and misery, but my true home was my underground laboratory. There, amidst fumes and furnaces, I sought to bend matter to my will.
The Temple of Pity and Mystery
I did not paint canvases; I carved philosophy into stone. My masterpiece is not a painting, but a place: the Sansevero Chapel.
I wished to transform the old family church into a hermetic temple, a book of marble that only the initiated could read. I summoned the finest sculptors—Sanmartino, Queirolo, Corradini—but it was I who guided their hands. It was I who gave them the marble and, some say, the secret to rendering it as soft as silk.
It is there that my greatest vision lies: the Veiled Christ.
Look at him. A broken body covered by a transparent shroud. People whisper that I used alchemy to "marbelize" real fabric, transforming linen into stone with a secret potion. Is it true? Or is it merely the superhuman skill of Sanmartino’s chisel driven by my genius? I will let the doubt torment you, for doubt is the beginning of knowledge.
Beyond Nature
I did not stop at marble. I wanted to understand the human vessel. I created the Anatomical Machines, two skeletons wrapped in a perfect network of veins and arteries, preserved for eternity. Even today, those who look upon them tremble. They wonder if these were servants killed for an experiment or masterpieces of wax and wire. The truth is a secret I carried to my grave.
I invented amphibious carriages, breach-loading rifles, fireworks of colors never before seen, and the "Eternal Lamp" said to burn without consuming fuel. Naples admired me, yet they feared me.
The Fall and the Black Legend
But genius attracts envy just as light attracts moths. The Church watched me with suspicion. The King, once my friend, distanced himself when my Masonic influence grew too powerful. I was forced to recant, to watch my books placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.
It became easy for the people to believe the rumors. They said I had killed seven cardinals to make chairs from their bones, that I raised the dead, that I had struck a pact with the Devil.
My "Black Legend" eclipsed my scientific discoveries. I died in 1771, not forgotten, but misunderstood. A scientist in a world that only wanted to see a sorcerer.
The Mystery Never Dies
And yet, centuries have passed, and my name still echoes in the alleyways of Naples.
Today, thousands enter my Chapel in silence. They gaze at The Release from Deception (Il Disinganno), with its impossible net carved from a single block of marble. They stare at the Veiled Christ and wonder how stone can look like a breath.
They called me a madman, a heretic, a magician. Today, they call me a polymath, a genius, the Leonardo of the South. My science may be lost, but the wonder I created is immortal. As long as mankind seeks to look beyond the veil of reality, I will be there.
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