Naples museum to allow visually impaired visitors to experience art through touch | Museums
The Sansevero Chapel Museum in Naples will allow dozens of visually impaired visitors to participate in a rare tactile experience, allowing them to touch famous works of art, including the Veiled Christ, considered one of the most striking masterpieces in the history of sculpture.
On March 17, the museum will host an initiative called La meraviglia a portata di mano – The accessible miracle – organized in partnership with the Italian Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired in Naples, offering approximately 80 blind and partially sighted visitors the chance to encounter marble masterpieces.
Visitors will also be guided through the chapel by visually impaired guides in a program designed to place accessibility at the heart of the museum experience.
The protective barrier surrounding the statues will be removed, allowing participants to explore by touching the intricate marble surface of the statues, including Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Veiled Christ, wearing latex gloves, which depicts Jesus covered by a transparent shroud made from the same block as the statue. The tactile route will also extend to the reliefs at the feet of the statues of La Pudicizia and Il Disinganno.
Chiara Locovardi, a guide, government agency told Ansa: “The curtain covering Jesus is extraordinary. It is impossible to understand how Sanmartino created him. For those who can see and those who cannot, the curtain defies explanation. When you touch it, you can feel the pulsing of the veins underneath.”
Completed in 1753, the Veiled Christ is one of the most astonishing achievements in marble. The transparency of the shroud covering Jesus’ body looks so real that many still believe it is the result of a lost alchemy that could turn cloth into stone.
Maria Alessandra Masucci, president of the Sansevero Chapel Museum, said: “This initiative forms part of our broader program to create an inclusive and accessible cultural space through specific pathways and tools designed to suit the different needs of museum visitors.”
Giuseppe Ambrosino of the Italian Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired said the project reflected a broader principle: that the enjoyment of beauty should be a universal right.
“Art should not be a privilege reserved for viewing,” he said. “Accessibility projects like this transform the museum into a truly inclusive space, affirming that art belongs to everyone. Visitors will not only be allowed to touch the marble sculpture; beauty itself will flow through the hands and reach directly to the heart.”
