Tap this post to scroll through some of the most impossible sculptures of all time 🧵
1. The veil that got an artist accused of alchemy
Giuseppe Sanmartino carved the Veiled Christ from a single block of white marble in 1753 for the Cappella Sansevero in Naples.
Contemporaries accused him of alchemy for its breathtaking realism, and Canova himself declared he would give ten years of his life to have created it.
2. Marble sits at 3-4 on the Mohs scale of hardness. Steel sits at 4 to 4.5.
Khafre Enthroned is made of anorthosite gneiss, which registers at 6 to 7. It was carved over four millennia ago by ancient Egyptians who, according to archaeologists, had not yet developed iron tools.