Life and invention by Raimondo di Sangro, Seventh Prince of Sansevero (1710 – 1771)
Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, is one of the most interesting personalities of Neapoletan ‘700, leader of one of the oldest and most prestigious families of the Kingdom of Naples, friend of King Carlo III, first Grand Master of the italian Freemasonry.
But, most of all, the Prince was a lover of Knowledge, devoted to studies and research, author of brilliant writings: his numerous inventions, his bizarre experiments, his writings, testimony the multiplicity of his interests and, at the same time, the wideness and deepness of his knowledge, revealing his nature of enlightened intellectual, focused on the most forwarding cultural themes of his times and, at the same time, well present in the darkest aspects of traditional doctrines.
The Prince has been a philosopher, in the Alchemic sense of the term, and has been an Alchemist himself, dedicating his whole existence to a passionate research of Nature and Life’s mysteries, conjugating ancient hermetic theories with an intense experimental practice of bizarre and singular experiments and invetions, in the spirit of Rosacrux’s tradition.
Prince of Sansevero, well known for his mysterious chapel, has dedicated his life with passion to physics and chemistry experiments, to the creation and development of mechanical instruments and new procedures and techniques, in civil and military fields.