Ex Voto: An Account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia
by Samuel Butler · English · Gutenberg #4073 · 369,237 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Ex Voto: An Account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia
Author: Samuel Butler
Release date: May 1, 2003 [eBook #4073]
Most recently updated: December 25, 2014
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4073
Credits: Transcribed from the 1890 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EX VOTO: AN ACCOUNT OF THE SACRO MONTE OR NEW JERUSALEM AT VARALLO-SESIA ***
Transcribed from the 1890 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: “Il Vecchietto.” By Tabachetti]
EX VOTO:
AN ACCOUNT OF
_The Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem_
_at Varallo-Sesia_
WITH SOME NOTICE OF
TABACHETTI’S REMAINING WORK AT THE
SANCTUARY OF CREA.
BY
SAMUEL BUTLER,
AUTHOR OF “ALPS AND SANCTUARIES,” “EREWHON,” ETC.
“Il n’a a que deux ennemis de la religion—le trop peu, et le trop; et
des deux
le trop est mille fois le plus dangereux.”—L’ABBÉ MABILLON, 1698.
OP. 9.
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET.
1890.
_All rights reserved_.
* * * * *
AI VARALLESI E VALSESIANI
L’AUTORE
RICONOSCENTE.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
THE illustrations to this book are mainly collotype photographs by
Messrs. Maclure, Macdonald & Co., of Glasgow. Notwithstanding all their
care, it cannot be pretended that the result is equal to what would have
been obtained from photogravure; I found, however, that to give anything
like an adequate number of photogravures would have made the book so
expensive that I was reluctantly compelled to abandon the idea.
As these sheets leave my hands, my attention is called to a pleasant
article by Miss Alice Greene about Varallo, that appeared in _The Queen_
for Saturday, April 21, 1888. The article is very nicely illustrated,
and gives a good idea of the place. Of the Sacro Monte Miss Greene
says:—“On the Sacro Monte the tableaux are produced in perpetuity, only
the figures are not living, they are terra-cotta statues painted and
moulded in so life-like a way that you feel that, were a man of flesh and
blood to get mixed up with the crowd behind the grating, you would have
hard work to distinguish him from the figures that have never had life.”
I should wish to modify in some respects the conclusion arrived at on pp.
148, 149, about Michael Angelo Rossetti’s having been the principal
sculptor of the Massacre of the Innocents chapel. There can be no doubt
that Rossetti did the figure which he has signed, and several others in
the chapel. One of those which are probably by him (the soldier with
outstretched arm to the left of the composition) appears in the view of
the chapel that I have given to face page 144, but on consideration I
incline against the supposition of my text, _i.e._, that the signature
should be taken as governing the whole work, or at any rate the greater
part of it, and lean towards accepting the external authority, which,
_quantum valeat_, is all in favour of Paracca. I have changed my mind
through an increasing inability to resist the opinion of those who hold
that the figures fall into two main groups, one by the man who did the
signed figure, _i.e._, Michael Angelo Rossetti; and another, comprising
all the most vigorous, interesting, and best placed figures, that
certainly appears to be by a much more powerful hand. Probably, then,
Rossetti finished Paracca’s work and signed one figure as he did, without
any idea of claiming the whole, and believing that Paracca’s predominant
share was too well known to make mistake about the authorship of the work
possible. I have therefore in the title to the illustration given the
work to Paracca, but it must be admitted that the question is one of
great difficulty, and I can only hope that some other work of Paracca’s
may be found which will tend to settle it. I will thankfully receive
information about any other such work.
_May_ 1, 1888.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE REV. S. W. KING—LANZI AND LOMAZZO 10
III. VARALLO, PAST AND PRESENT 24
IV. BERNARDINO CAIMI, AND FASSOLA 38
V. EARLY HISTORY OF THE SACRO MONTE 49
VI. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 69
VII. AIM AND SCOPE OF THE SACRO MONTE 80
VIII. GAUDENZIO FERRARI, TABACHETTI, AND GIOVANNI 90
D’ENRICO
IX. THE ASCENT OF THE SACRO MONTRE, AND CHAPEL NO. 114
1, ADAM AND EVE; NO. 2, THE ANNUNCIATION; NO. 3,
THE SALUTATION OF MARY BY ELIZABETH; NO. 4,
FIRST VISION OF ST. JOSEPH
X. CHAPEL NO. 5, VISIT OF THE MAGI; NO. 6, IL 132
PRESEPIO; NO. 7, VISIT OF THE SHEPHERDS; NO. 8,
CIRCUMCISION; NO. 9, JOSEPH WARNED TO FLY; NO.
10, FLIGHT INTO EGYPT; NO. 11, MASSACRE OF THE
INNOCENTS
XI. CHAPEL NO. 12, BAPTISM; NO. 13, TEMPTATION; NO. 153
14, WOMAN OF SAMARIA; NO. 15, THE PARALYTIC; NO.
16, WIDOW’S SON AT NAIN; NO. 17,
TRANSFIGURATION; NO. 18, RAISING OF LAZARUS; NO.
19, ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM; NO. 20, LAST SUPPER;
NO. 21, AGONY IN THE GARDEN; NO. 22, SLEEPING
APOSTLES
XII. THE PALACE OF PILATE; CHAPEL NO. 23, THE CAPTURE 166
OF CHRIST; NO. 24, CHRIST TAKEN TO ANNAS; NO.
25, CHRIST BEFORE CAIAPHAS; NO. 26, REPENTANCE
OF ST. PETER; NO. 27, CHRIST BEFORE PILATE; NO.
28, CHRIST BEFORE HEROD; NO. 29, CHRIST TAKEN
BACK TO PILATE; NO. 30, FLAGELLATION; NO. 31,
CROWNING WITH THORNS; NO. 32, CHRIST AT THE
STEPS OF THE PRETORIUM; NO. 33, ECCE HOMO; NO.
34, PILATE WASHING HIS HANDS; NO. 35, CHRIST
CONDEMNED TO DEATH
XIII. MYSTERIES OF THE PASSION AND DEATH; CHAPEL NO. 195
36, THE JOURNEY TO CALVARY; NO. 37, NAILING OF
CHRIST TO THE CROSS; NO. 38, THE CRUCIFIXION
XIV. CHAPEL NO. 39, THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS 214
XV. THE PIETÀ AND REMAINING CHAPELS. CHAPEL NO. 40, 225
THE PIETÀ; NO. 41, THE ENTOMBMENT; REMAINING
CHAPELS AND CHIESA MAGGIORE
XVI. TABACHETTI’S WORK AT CREA 239
XVII. CONCLUSION 259
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
_For explanation of the Asterisk see Advertisement of Photographs at the
end of the book_.
“II VECCHIETTO,” FROM THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS _Frontispiece_
(CHAPEL NO. 39)
PLATE
I. PLAN OF THE SACRO MONTE IN 1671 68
II. THE OLD ADAM AND EVE 121
III. TABACHETTI’S ADAM AND EVE 122
IV. FIRST VISION OF ST. JOSEPH 130
V. THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS 144
VI. THE TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS 154
VII. CAIAPHAS 170
VIII. HEROD 176
IX. TWO LAUGHING BOYS 177
X. MAN IN BACKGROUND OF THE FLAGELLATION 182
CHAPEL
XI. STEFANO SCOTTO, AND MR. S. BUTLER 189
XII. TABACHETTI’S JOURNEY TO CALVARY 195
GENERAL VIEW TO THE RIGHT.
XIII. TABACHETTI’S JOURNEY TO CALVARY 196
ST. JOHN AND THE MADONNA WITH THE OTHER
MARIES.
XIV. TABACHETTI’S JOURNEY TO CALVARY 198
STA. VERONICA AND MAN WITH GOITRE.
XV. TABACHETTI’S JOURNEY TO CALVARY 200
THE TWO THIEVES AND THEIR DRIVER.
XVI. GAUDENZIO FERRARI’S CRUCIFIXION 203
GENERAL VIEW LOOKING TOWARDS THE BAD
THIEF.
XVII. GAUDENZIO FERRARI’S CRUCIFIXION 204
GENERAL VIEW LOOKING TOWARDS THE GOOD
THIEF.
XVIII. GAUDENZIO FERRARI’S PORTRAITS OF 206
STEFANO SCOTTO AND LEONARDO DA VINCI
XIX. BERNARDINO DE CONTI’S DRAWING OF 207
STEFANO SCOTTO, AND PROFILE OF LEONARDO
DA VINCI BY HIMSELF (REVERSED)
XX. GAUDENZIO FERRARI’S CRUCIFIXION 210
THE BAD THIEF.
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
UNABLE to go to Dinant before I published “Ex Voto,” I have since been
there, and have found out a good deal about Tabachetti’s family. His
real name was de Wespin, and he tame of a family who had been
Copper-beaters, and hence sculptors—for the Flemish copper-beaters made
their own models—for many generations. The family seems to have been the
most numerous and important in Dinant.
The sculptor’s grandfather, Perpète de Wespin, was the first to take the
sobriquet of Tabaguet, and though in the deeds which I have seen at Namur
the name is always given as “de Wespin,” yet the addition of “dit
Tabaguet” shows that this last was the name in current use. His father
and mother, and a sister Jacquelinne, under age, appear to have all died
in 1587. Jean de Wespin, the sculptor, is mentioned in a deed of that
date as “expatrié,” and he has a “gardien” or “tuteur,” who is to take
charge of his inheritance, appointed by the Court, as though he were for
some reason unable to appoint one for himself. This lends colour to
Fassola’s and Torrotti’s statement that he lost his reason about 1586 or
1587. I think it more likely, however, considering that he was alive and
doing admirable work some fifty years after 1590, that he was the victim
of some intrigue than that he was ever really mad. At any rate, about
1587 he appears to have been unable to act for himself.
If his sister Jacquelinne died under age in 1587, Jean is not likely to
have been then much more than thirty, so we may conclude that he was born
about 1560. There is some six or eight years’ work by him remaining at
Varallo, and described as finished in the 1586 edition of Caccia.
Tabachetti, therefore, must have left home very young, and probably went
straight to Varallo. In 1586 or 1587 we lose sight of him till 1590 or
1591, when he went to Crea, where he did about forty chapels—almost all
of which have perished.
On again visiting Milan I found in the Biblioteca Nazionale a guide-book
to the Sacro Monte, which was not in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and of
whose existence I had never heard. This guide-book was published in 1606
and reissued in 1610; it mentions all changes since 1590, and even
describes chapels not yet in existence, but it says nothing about
Tabachetti’s First Vision of St. Joseph chapel—the only one of his
chapels not given as completed in the 1590 edition of Caccia. I had
assumed too hastily that this chapel was done just after the 1590 edition
of Caccia had been published, and just before Tabachetti left for Crea in
1590 or 1591, whereas it now appears that it was done about 1610, during
a short visit paid by the sculptor to Varallo some twenty years after he
had left it.
Finding that Tabachetti returned to Varallo about 1610, I was able to
understand two or three figures in the Ecce Homo chapel which I had long
thought must be by Tabachetti, but had not ventured to ascribe to him,
inasmuch as I believed him to have finally left Varallo some twenty years
before the Ecce Homo chapel was made. I have now no doubt that he lent a
hand to Giovanni D’Enrico with this chapel, in which he has happily left
us his portrait signed with a V (doubtless standing for W, a letter which
the Italians have not got), cut on the hat before baking, and invisible
from outside the chapel.
[Picture: Seal] Signor Arienta had told me there was a seal on the back
of a figure in the Journey to Calvary chapel; on examining this I found
it to show a W, with some kind of armorial bearings underneath. I have
not been able to find anything like these arms, of which I give a sketch
herewith: they have no affinity with those of the de Wespin family,
unless the cups with crosses under them are taken as modifications of the
three-footed caldrons which were never absent from the arms of Dinant
copper-beaters. Tabachetti (for I shall assume that the seal was placed
by him) perhaps sealed this figure as an afterthought in 1610, being
unable to cut easily into the hard-baked clay, and if he could have
Italianised the W he would probably have done so. I should say that I
arrived at the Ecce Homo figure as a portrait of Tabachetti before I
found the V cut upon the hat; I found the V on examining the portrait to
see if I could find any signature. It stands next to a second portrait
of Leonardo da Vinci by Gaudenzio Ferrari, taken into the Ecce Homo
chapel, doubtless, on the demolition of some earlier work by Gaudenzio on
or near the same site. I knew of this second portrait of Leonardo da
Vinci when I published my first edition, but did not venture to say
anything about it, as thinking that one life-sized portrait of a Leonardo
da Vinci by a Gaudenzio Ferrari was as much of a find at one time as my
readers would put up with. I had also known of the V on Tabachetti’s
hat, but, having no idea that his name was de Wespin, had not seen why
this should help it to be a portrait of Tabachetti, and had allowed the
fact to escape me.
The figure next to Scotto in the Ecce Homo chapel is, I do not doubt, a
portrait of Giovanni D’Enrico. This may explain the tradition at Varallo
that Scotto is Antonio D’Enrico, which cannot be. Next to Giovanni
D’Enrico stands the second Leonardo da Vinci, and next to Leonardo, as I
have said, Tabachetti. In the chapel by Gaudenzio, from which they were
taken, the figures of Leonardo and Scotto probably stood side by side as
they still do in the Crucifixion chapel. I supposed that Tabachetti and
D’Enrico, who must have perfectly well known who they were, separated
them in order to get Giovanni D’Enrico nearer the grating. It was the
presumption that we had D’Enrico’s portrait between Scotto and Leonardo,
and the conviction that Tabachetti also had worked in the chapel, that
led me to examine the very beautiful figure on the father side of
Leonardo to see if I could find anything to confirm my suspicion that it
was a portrait of Tabachetti himself.
I do not think there can be much doubt that the Vecchietto is also a
portrait of Tabachetti done some thirty years later than 1610, nor yet do
I doubt, now I know that he returned to Varallo in 1610, that the figures
of Herod and of Caiaphas are by him. I believe he also at this time paid
a short visit to Orta, and did three or four figures in the left hand
part of the foreground of the Canonisation of St. Francis chapel. At
Montrigone, a mile or so below Borgo-Sesia station, I believe him to have
done at least two or three figures, which are very much in his manner,
and not at all like either Giacomo Ferro or Giovanni D’Enrico, to whom
they are usually assigned. These figures are some twenty-five years
later than 1610, and tend to show that Tabachetti, as an old man of over
seventy, paid a third visit to the Val-Sesia.
The substance of the foregoing paragraphs is published at greater length,
and with illustrations, in the number of the _Universal Review_ for
November 1888, and to which I must refer my readers. I have, however,
here given the pith of all that I have yet been able to find out about
Tabachetti since “Ex Voto” was published. I should like to add the
following in regard to other chapels.
[Picture: Monogram] Signor Arienta has found a 1523 scrawled on the
frescoes of the Crucifixion chapel. I do not think this shows
necessarily that the work was more than begun at that date. He has also
found a monogram, which we believe to be Gaudenzio Ferrari’s, on the
central shield with a lion on it, given in the illustration facing p.
210. On further consideration, I feel more and more inclined to think
that the frescoes in this chapel have been a good deal retouched.
I hardly question that the Second Vision of St. Joseph chapel is by
Tabachetti, as also the Woman of Samaria. The Christ in this last chapel
is a restoration. In a woodcut of 1640 the position of the figures is
reversed, but nothing more than the positions.
Lastly, the Virgin’s mother does not have eggs east of Milan. It is a
Valsesian custom to give eggs beaten up with wine and sugar to women
immediately on their confinement, and I am told that the eggs do no harm
though not according to the rules. I am told that Valsesian influence
must always be suspected when the Virgin’s mother is having eggs.
_November_ 30, 1888.
* * * * *
_Note_.—A copy of this postscript can be easily inserted into a bound
copy, and will be forwarded by Messrs. TRÜBNER & CO. on receipt of
stamped and addressed envelope.
CHAPTER I.
_INTRODUCTION_.
IN the preface to “Alps and Sanctuaries” I apologised for passing over
Varallo-Sesia, the most important of North Italian sanctuaries, on the
ground that it required a book to itself. This book I will now endeavour
to supply, though well aware that I can only imperfectly and unworthily
do so. To treat the subject in the detail it merits would be a task
beyond my opportunities; for, in spite of every endeavour, I have not
been able to see several works and documents, without which it is useless
to try and unravel the earlier history of the sanctuary. The book by
Caccia, for example, published by Sessali at Novara in 1565, and
reprinted at Brescia in 1576, is sure to turn up some day, but I have
failed to find it at Varallo, Novara (where it appears in the catalogue,
but not on the shelves), Milan, the Louvre, the British Museum, and the
Bodleian Library. Through the kindness of Sac. Ant. Ceriani, I was able
to learn that the Biblioteca Ambrosiana possessed what there can be
little doubt is a later edition of this book, dated 1587, but really
published at the end of 1586, and another dated 1591, to which Signor
Galloni in his “Uomini e fatti celebri di Valle-Sesia” (p. 110) has
called attention as the first work ever printed at Varallo. But the last
eight of the twenty-one years between 1565 and 1586 were eventful, and
much could be at once seen by a comparison of the 1565, 1576, and 1586
[1587] editions, about which speculation is a waste of time while the
earlier works are wanting. I have been able to gather two or three
interesting facts by a comparison of the 1586 and 1591 editions, and do
not doubt that the date, for example, of Tabachetti’s advent to Varallo
and of his great Calvary Chapel would be settled within a very few years
if the missing books were available.
Another document which I have in vain tried to see is the plan of the
Sacro Monte as it stood towards the close of the sixteenth century, made
by Pellegrino Tibaldi with a view to his own proposed alterations. He
who is fortunate enough to gain access to this plan—which I saw for a few
minutes in 1884, but which is now no longer at Varallo—will find a great
deal made clear to him which he will otherwise be hardly able to find
out. Over and above the foregoing, there is the inventory drawn up by
order of Giambattista Albertino in 1614, and a number of other documents,
to which reference will be found in the pages of Bordiga, Galloni,
Tonetti, and of the many others who have written upon the Val Sesia and
its history. A twelve months’ stay in the Val Sesia would not suffice to
do justice to all the interesting and important questions which arise
wholesale as soon as the chapels on the Sacro Monte are examined with any
care. I shall confine myself, therefore, to a consideration of the most
remarkable features of the Sacro Monte as it exists at present, and to
doing what I can to stimulate further study on the part of others.
I cannot understand how a field so interesting, and containing treasures
in so many respects unrivalled, can have remained almost wholly untilled
by the numerous English lovers of art who yearly flock to Italy; but the
fact is one on which I may perhaps be congratulated, inasmuch as more
shortcomings and errors of judgment may be forgiven in my own book, in
virtue of its being the first to bring Varallo with any prominence before
English readers. That little is known about the Sacro Monte, even by the
latest and best reputed authorities on art, may be seen by turning to Sir
Henry Layard’s recent edition of Kugler’s “Handbook of Painting,”—a work
which our leading journals of culture have received with acclamation.
Sir Henry Layard has evidently either never been at Varallo, or has so
completely forgotten what he saw there that his visit no longer counts.
He thinks, for example, that the chapels, or, as he also calls them,
“stations” (which in itself should show that he has not seen them), are
on the way up to the Sacro Monte, whereas all that need be considered are
on the top. He thinks that the statues generally in these supposed
chapels “on the ascent of the Sacro Monte” are attributed to Gaudenzio
Ferrari, whereas it is only in two or three out of some five-and-forty
that any statues are believed to be by Gaudenzio. He thinks the famous
sculptor Tabachetti—for famous he is in North Italy, where he is
known—was a painter, and speaks of him as “a local imitator” of
Gaudenzio, who “decorated” other chapels, and “whose works only show how
rapidly Gaudenzio’s influence declined and his school deteriorated.” As
a matter of fact, Tabachetti was a Fleming and his name was Tabaquet; but
this is a detail. Sir Henry Layard thinks that “Miel” was also “a local
imitator” of Gaudenzio. It is not likely that this painter ever worked
on the Sacro Monte at all; but if he did, Sir Henry Layard should surely
know that he came from Antwerp. Sir Henry Layard does not appear to know
that there are any figures in the Crucifixion Chapel of Gaudenzio, or
indeed in any of the chapels for which Gaudenzio painted frescoes, and
falls into a trap which seems almost laid on purpose for those who would
write about Varallo without having been there, in supposing that
Gaudenzio painted a Pietà on the Sacro Monte. Having thus displayed the
ripeness of his knowledge as regards facts, he says that though the
chapels “on the ascent of the Sacro Monte” are “objects of wonder and
admiration to the innumerable pilgrims who frequent this sacred spot,”
yet “the bad taste of the colour and clothing make them highly repugnant
to a cultivated eye.”
I begin to understand now how we came to buy the Blenheim Raffaelle.
Finally, Sir Henry Layard says it is “very doubtful” whether any of the
statues were modelled or executed by Gaudenzio Ferrari at all. It is a
pity he has not thought it necessary give a single reason or authority in
support of a statement so surprising.
Some of these blunders appear in the edition of 1874 edited by Lady
Eastlake. In that edition the writer evidently knows nothing of any
figures in the Crucifixion Chapel, and Sir Henry Layard was unable to
supply the omission. The writer in the 1874 edition says that “Gaudenzio
is seen as a modeller of painted terra-cotta in the stations ascending to
the chapel (_sic_) on the Sacro Monte.” It is from this source that Sir
Henry Layard got his idea that the chapels are on the way up to the Sacro
Monte, and that they are distinct from those for which Gaudenzio painted
frescoes on the top of the mountain. Having perhaps seen photographs of
the Sacro Monte at Varese, where the chapels climb the hill along with
the road, or having perhaps actually seen the Madonna del Sasso at
Locarno, where small oratories with frescoes of the Stations of the Cross
are placed on the ascent, he thought those at Varallo might as well
remain on the ascent also, and that it would be safe to call them
“stations.” It is the writer in the 1874 edition who first gave him or
her self airs about a cultivated eye; but he or she had the grace to put
in a saving clause to the effect that the designs in some instances were
“full of grace.” True, Sir Henry Layard has never seen the designs;
nevertheless his eye is too highly cultivated to put up with this clause;
so it has disappeared, to make room, I suppose, for the sentence in which
so much accurate knowledge is displayed in respect to Tabachetti and Miel
d’Anvers. Sir Henry Layard should keep to the good old plan of saying
that the picture would have been better if the artist had taken more
pains, and praising the works of Pietro Perugino. Personally, I confess
I am sorry he has never seen the Sacro Monte. If he has trod on so many
ploughshares without having seen Varallo, what might he not have achieved
in the plenitude of a taste which has been cultivated in every respect
save that of not pretending to know more than one does know, if he had
actually been there, and seen some one or two of the statues themselves?
I have only sampled Sir Henry Layard’s work in respect of two other
painters, but have found no less reason to differ from him there than
here. I refer to his remarks about Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. I must
reserve the counter-statement of my own opinion for another work, in
which I shall hope to deal with the real and supposed portraits of those
two great men. I will, however, take the present opportunity of
protesting against a sentence which caught my eye in passing, and which I
believe to be as fundamentally unsound as any I ever saw written, even by
a professional art critic or by a director of a national collection. Sir
Henry Layard, in his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci, says—
“One thing prominently taught us by the works of Leonardo and
Raffaelle, of Michael Angelo and Titian, is distinctly this—that
purity of morals, freedom of institutions, and sincerity of faith
have nothing to do with excellence in art.”
I should prefer to say, that if the works of the four artists above
mentioned show one thing more clearly than another, it is that neither
power over line, nor knowledge of form, nor fine sense of colour, nor
facility of invention, nor any of the marvellous gifts which three out of
the four undoubtedly possessed, will make any man’s work live permanently
in our affections unless it is rooted in sincerity of faith and in love
towards God and man. More briefly, it is ἀγάπη, or the spirit, and not
γνώσις, or the letter, which is the soul of all true art. This, it
should go without saying, applies to music, literature, and to whatever
can be done at all. If it has been done “to the Lord”—that is to say,
with sincerity and freedom from affectation—whether with conscious
effusion, as by Gaudenzio, or with perhaps robuster unconsciousness, as
by Tabachetti, a halo will gather round it that will illumine it though
it pass through the valley of the shadow of death itself. If it has been
done in self-seeking, as, _exceptis excipiendis_, by Leonardo, Titian,
Michael Angelo, and Raffaelle, it will in due course lose hold and power
in proportion to the insincerity with which it was tainted.
CHAPTER II.
_THE REV. S. W. KING—LANZI AND LOMAZZO_.
LEAVING Sir Henry Layard, let us turn to one of the few English writers
who have given some attention to Varallo—I mean to the Rev. S. W. King’s
delightful work “The Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps.” This author
says—
“When we first visited Varallo, it was comparatively little known to
travellers, but we now found that of late years many more had
frequented it, and its beautiful scenery and great attractions were
becoming more generally and deservedly appreciated. Independently of
its own picturesque situation, and its advantages as head-quarters
for exploring the neighbouring Vals and their romantic scenery, the
works which it possesses of the ancient and famous Val Sesian school
of painters and modellers are most interesting. At the head of them
stands first and foremost Gaudenzio Ferrari, whose original and
masterly productions ought to be far more widely known and studied
than they as yet are; and some of the finest of them are to be found
in the churches and Sacro Monte of Varallo” (p. 498).
Of the Sacro Monte the same writer says—
“No situation could have been more happily chosen for the purpose
intended than the little mountain rising on the north of Varallo to a
height of about 270 feet”—[this is an error; the floor of the church
on the Sacro Monte is just 500 feet above the bridge over the
Mastallone]—“on which the chapels, oratories, and convents of that
extraordinary creation the New Jerusalem are grouped together.
Besides the beauty of the site and its convenient proximity to a town
like Varallo of some 3000 inhabitants, the character of the mountain
is exactly adapted for the effective disposition of the various
‘stations’ of which it consists”—[it does not consist of
“stations”]—“and on this account chiefly it was selected by the
founder, the ‘Blessed Bernardino Caimo.’ A Milanese of noble family,
and Vicar of the Convent of the Minorites in Milan, and also in
connection with that of Varallo, he was specially commissioned by
Pope Sixtus IV. to visit the Sepulchre and other holy places in
Palestine, and while there took the opportunity of making copies and
drawings, with the intention of erecting a facsimile of them in his
native country. On his return to Italy in 1491, after examining all
the likely sites within reasonable distance of Milan, he found the
conical hills of the Val Sesia the best adapted for his design, and
fixed upon Varallo as the spot; being probably specially attracted to
it from the fact of the convent and church of Sta. Maria delle
Grazie, already described, having been conveyed through him to the
‘Minori Osservanti,’ as appears from a brief of Innocent VIII., dated
December 21, 1486.”
Mr. King does not give the source from which he derived his knowledge of
the existence of this act, and I have not come across a notice of it
elsewhere, except a brief one in Signor Galloni’s work (p. 71), and a
reference to it in the conveyance of April 14, 1493. But Signor Arienta
of Varallo, whose industry in collecting materials for a history of the
Sacro Monte cannot be surpassed, showed me a transcript from an old plan
of the church of S. Maria delle Grazie, in which the inscription on
Bernardino Caimi’s grave was given—an inscription which (so at least I
understood Signor Arienta to say) is now covered by an altar which had
been erected on the site of the grave. The inscription ran:—
“Hic quiescunt ossa B. Bernardini Caimis Mediolan. S. Montis Varalli
Fundatoris An. 1486. Pontif. Dipl sub die 21 Xbris. Mortuus est
autem in hoc coenobio An. Vulg. Æræ 1499.”
It would thus appear that the Sacro Monte was founded four years earlier
than the received date. The formal deed of conveyance of the site on the
mountain from the town to Bernardino Caimi was not signed till the 14th
of April 1493; but the work had been already commenced, as is shown by
the inscription still remaining over the reproduction of the Holy
Sepulchre, which is dated the 17th of October 1491. Probably the work
was contemplated in 1486, and interrupted by B. Caimi’s return to
Jerusalem in 1487, not to be actively resumed till 1490.
“The first stone,” says Mr. King, “was laid by Scarognini, a Milanese
‘magnifico,’ who cordially entered into the scheme; and at his
expense the Holy Sepulchre was completed, and a hospice attached,
where the founder and a number of Franciscan brothers came to reside
in 1493. Caimo had planned a vast extension of this commencement,
but died within three years, leaving his designs to be carried out by
his successors.”
. . . . .
“Each oratory contains a group—in some very numerous—of figures
modelled in terra-cotta the size of life or larger; many of them of
great merit as works of art, others very inferior and mere rubbish.
The figures are coloured and occasionally draped with appropriate
clothing, the resemblance to life being heightened by the addition of
human hair”—[which, by the way, is always horse-hair]—“and the effect
is often very startling. Each chapel represents a different
‘mystery,’ and, beside the modelled figures, the walls are decorated
with frescoes. The front of each is open to the air, all but a wire
grating, through apertures in which the subject may be perfectly seen
in the position intended by the designer” (pp. 510–512).
Mr. King says, correctly, that Gaudenzio’s earliest remaining work on the
Sacro Monte is the Chapel of the Pietà, that originally contained the
figures of Christ bearing the cross, but from which the modelled figures
were removed, others being substituted that had no connection with the
background. I do not know, however, that Christ was actually carrying
the cross in the chapel as it originally stood. The words of the 1587
edition of Caccia (?) stand, “Come il N.S. fu spogliato de suoi panni, e
condotto sopra il Monte Calvario, ch’ e fatto di bellissimo e ben inteso
relievo.”
“The frescoes on the wall,” he continues, “are particularly
interesting, as having been painted by him at the early age of
nineteen”—[Mr. King supposes Gaudenzio Ferrari to have been born in
1484]—“when his ambition to share in the glory and renown of the
great work was gratified by this chapel being intrusted to him; a
proof of his early talent and the just appreciation of it. The
frescoes are much injured, but of the chief one there is enough to
show its excellence. On one side is St. John, with clasped hands
gazing upwards in grief, and the two Marys sorrowing, as a soldier in
the centre seems to forbid their following further; his helmet is
embossed and gilt as in the instances in the Franciscan church, while
the two thieves are led bound by a figure on horseback.”
These frescoes appear to me to have been not so much restored as
repainted—that is to say, where they are not almost entirely gone. The
green colour that now prevails in the shadows and half-tones is alien to
Gaudenzio, and cannot be accepted as his. I should say, however, that my
friend Signor Arienta of Varallo differs from me on this point. At any
rate, the work is now little more than a ruin, and the terra-cotta Pietà
is among the least satisfactory groups on the Sacro Monte. Mr. King
continues:—
“In the Chapel of the Adoration of the Magi we have a work of higher
merit, giving evidence of his studies under Raphael.”
Here Mr. King is in some measure mistaken. The frescoes in the Magi
Chapel are indeed greatly finer than those in the present Pietà, but they
were painted from thirty to forty years later, when Gaudenzio was in his
prime, and it is to years of intervening incessant effort and practice,
not to any study under Raphael, that the enlargement of style and greater
freedom of design is due. Gaudenzio never studied under Raphael; he may
have painted for him, and perhaps did so—no one knows whether he did or
did not—but in every branch of his art he was incomparably Raphael’s
superior, and must have known it perfectly well.
Returning to Mr. King, with whom, in the main, I am in cordial sympathy,
we read:—
“The group of ten figures in terra-cotta represents the three kings
just arrived with their immediate attendants, and alighting at the
door of an inner recess, where a light burns over the manger of
Bethlehem, and in which is a simple but exquisite group of St.
Joseph, the Virgin, and Child. On the walls of the chapel are
painted in fresco a crowd of followers, the varieties of whose
costumes, attitudes, and figures are most cleverly portrayed. In
modelling the horses which form part of the central group, Ferrari
was assisted by his pupil Fermo Stella.”—[Fermo Stella is not known
to have been a pupil of Gaudenzio’s, and was probably established as
a painter before Gaudenzio began to work at all.]—“But the greatest
of all Gaudenzio’s achievements is the large chapel of the
Crucifixion, a work of the most extraordinary character and masterly
execution. His first design for the subject, on the screen of the
Minorite Church, he has here carried out in life-like figures in
terra-cotta; twenty-six of which form the centre group, embodying the
events of the Passion; while round the walls are depicted with
wonderful power a crowd of spectators, numbering some 150, most of
whom are gazing at the central figure of the Saviour on the cross.
The variety of expression, costume, and character is almost infinite.
Round the roof are twenty angels in the most varied and graceful
attitudes, deserving of special attention; and also a hideous figure
of Lucifer.”
Gaudenzio’s devils are never quite satisfactory. His angels are divine,
and no one can make them cry as he does. When my friend Mr. H. Festing
Jones met a lovely child crying in the streets of Varallo last summer, he
said it was crying like one of Gaudenzio’s angels; and so it was.
Gaudenzio was at home with everything human, and even superhuman, if
beautiful; if it was only a case of dealing with ugly, wicked, and
disagreeable people, he knew all about this, and could paint them if the
occasion required it; but when it came to a downright unmitigated devil,
he was powerless. He could never have done Tabachetti’s serpent in the
Adam and Eve Chapel, nor yet the plausible fair-spoken devil, as in the
Temptation Chapel, also by Tabachetti.
To conclude my extracts from Mr. King. Speaking of the Crucifixion
Chapel, he says:—
“Though this combination of terra-cotta and fresco may not be as
highly esteemed in the present day as in the times when this
extraordinary sanctuary sprang into existence, yet this composition
must always be admired as one of the greatest of Ferrari’s works, and
undoubtedly that on which he lavished the full force of his genius
and the collected studies and experience of his previous artist
life.”
It is noteworthy, but not perhaps surprising, that this observant,
intelligent, and sympathetic writer, probably through inability to at
once understand and enter into the conventions rendered necessary by the
conditions under which works so unfamiliar to him must be both executed
and looked at, has failed to notice the existence of Tabachetti, never
mentioning his name nor referring to one of his works—not even to the
Madonna and Child in the church of S. Gaudenzio, which one would have
thought could hardly fail to strike him.
* * * * *
Mr. King has elsewhere in his work referred both to Lanzi and to Lomazzo
in support of his very high opinion of Gaudenzio Ferrari; it may,
therefore, be as well to give extracts from each of these writers. Lanzi
says:—
“If we examine into further particulars of his style, we shall find
Ferrari’s warm and lively colouring so superior to that of the
Milanese artists of his day, that we shall have no difficulty in
recognising it in the churches where he painted; the eye of the
spectator is directly attracted towards it; his carnations are
natural and varied according to his subjects; his draperies display
much fancy and originality, with middle tints blended so skilfully as
to equal the most beautiful produced by any other artist. And, if we
may say so,—he succeeded in representing the minds even better than
the forms of his subjects. He particularly studied this branch of
the art, and we seldom observe more marked attitudes or more
expressive . . . As Lomazzo, however, has dwelt so much at length on
his admirable skill both in painting and modelling, it would be idle
to insist on it further. But I ought to add that it is a great
reflection upon Vasari that he did not better know or better estimate
such an artist; so that foreigners who form their opinions only from
history are left unacquainted with his merit, and have uniformly
neglected to do him justice in their writings.”
Lomazzo says:—
“Now amongst the worthy painters who excelled herein, Raph. Urbine
was not the least who performed his workes with a divine kind of
maiesty; neither was Polidore”—[Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio]—“much
behind him in his kinde, whose pictures seemed as it were passing
furious; nor yet Andreas Mantegna, whose vaine showed a very
laborious curiositie; nor yet Leonard Vincent”—[Leonardo da
Vinci]—“in whose doings there was never any error found in this
point. Wherof amongst all other of his works, that admirable last
supper of Christ in Refect. S. Maria de Gratia in Milane maketh most
evident proofe, in which he hath so lively expressed the passions of
the Apostles mindes in their countenances and the rest of their
bodies, that a man may boldly say the truth was nothing superior to
his representation, and neede not be afraide to reckon it among the
best works of oyle-painting (of which kind of painting John de Bruges
was the first inventor). For in those Apostles you might distinctly
perceive admiration, feare, griefe, suspition, love, &c.; all which
were sometimes to be seen together in one of them, and finally in
Judas a treason-plotting countenance, as it were the very true
counterfiet of a traitor. So that therein he has left a sufficient
argument of his rare perfection, in the true understanding of the
passions of the mind exemplified outwardly in the bodie. Which
because it is the most necessary part of painting, I purpose (as I
say) to handle in this present booke. I may not omit Mi. Angelo in
any case, whose skill and painfulnesse in this point was so greate,
that his pictures carry with them more hard motions expressed after
an unusual manner, but all of them tending to a certaine bould
stoutnesse. And as for Titian, he hath worthely purchased the name
of a great painter in this matter, as his pictures do sufficiently
witness; in each whereof there shineth a certain mooving vertue,
seeming to incite the beholder unto the imitation thereof. Of whom
this saying may well be verified, that he was beloved of the world
and envied of nature.
“Finally, mine old Master Gaudentius (though he be not much knowne)
was inferior unto fewe, in giving the apt motions to the Saintes and
Angels; who was not onely a very witty painter (as I have elsewhere
showed), but also a most profound philosopher and mathematician.
Amongst all whose all-praiseworthy workes (which are almost infinite,
especially in this point of motion) there are divers mysteries of
Christe’s passion, of his doing, but chiefly a crucifix called Mount
Calvary at the Sepulchre of Varallo; where he hath made admirable
horses and strange angels, not only in painting, but also in
plasticke, of a kinde of earth wrought most curiously with his own
hand cleane rounde”—[_di tutto rilievo_]—“through all the figures.
“Besides in the vault of the Chappell of S. Mary de Gratia in Milane
he hath wrought most naturall angels, I meane especially for their
actions; there is also that mighty cube of St. Mary de Serono, the
Cupola of S. Maria at Saronno, full of thrones of angells set out
with actions and habites of all sortes, carrying diversity of most
strange instruments in their hands. I may not conceal that goodly
chapel which he made in his latter time, in the Church of Peace in
Milan, where you shall find small histories of our Lady and Joachime
showing such superexcellent motions that they seem much to revive and
animate the spectators.
“Moreover, the story of S. Roccho done by him in Vercelli, with
divers workes in that city; although indeede almost all Lombardy be
adorned with his most rare workes, I will not conceal one saying,
which was that all painters delight to steale other men’s inventions,
but that he himself was in no great danger of being detected of theft
hereafter. Now this great painter, although in reason he might for
his discretion, wisedome, and worth be compared with the above named
in the first booke, cap. 29, yet notwithstanding is he omitted by
George Vasary in his lives of the famous painters, carvers, and
architects. An argument, to say no worse of him, that he intended to
eternise only his own Tuscanes. But I proceede to the unfoulding of
the originall causes of these motions. And first for our better
understanding I will beginne with those passions of the mind whereby
the body is mooved to the performance of his particular effects”
(Id., Book ii. pp. 7, 8).
What Gaudenzio said was that all painters were fond of stealing, but that
they were pretty sure to be found out sooner or later.
For my own part, I should like to say that I prefer Giovanni Bellini to
Gaudenzio; but unless Giotto and Giorgione, I really do not know who the
Italian painters should stand before him. Bernardino Luini runs him
close, but great as Bernardino Luini was, Gaudenzio, in spite of not a
little mannerism, was greater.
The passage above referred to by Lomazzo as from his twenty-ninth chapter
runs:—
“Now if any man be desirous to learne the most exact and smallest
parts of these proportions, together with the way how to transfer
them from one body to another, I refer him to the works of Le.
Vincent, Bramante, Vincentius Foppa, Barnard Zenale; and for prints
to Albert Durer, Hispill Peum, &c. And out of mine owne workes he
may gather that I have endeavoured if not performed these
proportions, done according to these rules; which all the best and
famous painters of our time have likewise observed; who have also
attained to the exquisite proportions of the seven planets. Amongst
whom Mi. Angelo hath merited the chiefest commendation; next him
Raph. Urbine was famous for making of delicate and Venereall bodies;
Leon. Vincent for expressing of solary bodies; Polidore Caldara of
Caravaggio for Martiall bodies; Titianus Vecellino for Lunaryes; and
Gaudentius Ferrato da Valdugia a Milaner for Jovialistes” (55 Bk. i.
p. 117).
Having been compelled to look through the greater part of Lomazzo’s work,
inasmuch as not one of the several writers who have referred to his high
opinion of Gaudenzio has given chapter and page, I would fain allow
myself to linger somewhat in the fascinating paths into which my subject
has led me. I should like to call further attention to this forgotten
work as “Englished” by one Richard Haydocke, “Student in Physik,” and
dedicated to no less a person than “to the Right Worshipful Thomas
Bodley, Esq.,” whose foundation of the library that bears his name is
referred to in the preface. Gladly would I tell him about Alexander the
Great, who, being overmatched by his enemies in India, “was seen to reake
forth from his bodie fier and light;” and of the father of Theodoricus,
who, “by the like vehement effect, breathed out of his heart, as from a
burning furnace, fierce sparkels; which flying forth, shone, and made a
sound in the aire.” I should like to explain to him about the motions of
the seven planets which are the seven governours of the world, and how
Saturn “causeth a complexion of colour between blacke and yeallowe,
meager, distorted, of an harde skinne, eminent vaines, an hairie bodie,
small eies, eie brows joyned together &c.,” and how “he maketh a man
subtle, wittie, a way-layer, and murtherer;” how, again, Jupiter is
“magnipotent, good natured, fortunate, sweete, pleasant, the best
wel-willer, honest, neate, of a good gate, honorable, the author of mirth
and judgement, wise, true, the revealer of truth, the chiefe judge,
exceeding all the planets in goodnesse, the bestower of riches and
wisedome;” how Mars “broaches bould spirites, bloud, brawles and all
disordered, inconsiderate, and headdy actions;” how “his gestures are
terrible, cruell, fierce, angry, proude, hasty and violent,” and how also
“he is reputed hoat and drie in the highest degree, bearing sway over
redde choler.” I should like to tell him about the passions, actions,
and the gestures they occasion, described as they are with a sweet and
silly unreasonableness that is very charming to read, and makes no demand
whatever upon the understanding. But charming as are the pages of
Lomazzo, those of Torrotti are more charming still, and they have a
connection with our subject which Lomazzo’s have not. Enough, therefore,
that Mr. Haydocke did not get through more than half Lomazzo’s treatise,
and that, glancing over the untranslated pages, I see frequent allusions
to Gaudenzio in the warmest terms, but no passage so important as the
longer of the two quoted above.
CHAPTER III.
_VARALLO_, _PAST AND PRESENT_.
NOW that Varallo can be easily reached by the new railway from Novara, it
is not likely to remain so little known much longer. The town is
agreeable to stay in; it contains three excellent inns. I name them in
geographical order. They are the Italia, the Croce Bianca, and the
Posta, while there is another not less excellent on the Sacro Monte
itself. I have stayed at all these inns, and have received so much
kindness in each of them, that I must decline the invidious task of
recommending any one of them especially. My book is intended for
Varallo, and not for this or that hotel. The neighbourhood affords
numberless excursions, all of them full of interest and beauty; the town
itself, though no exception to the rule that the eastern cities of North
Italy are more beautiful than the western, is still full of admirable
subjects for those who are fond of sketching. The people are hospitable
to a fault; personally, I owe them the greatest honour that has ever been
conferred upon me—an honour far greater than any I have ever received
among those who know me better, and are probably better judges of my
deserts. The climate is healthy, the nights being cool even in the
height of summer, and the days almost invariably sunny and free from fog
in winter. With all these advantages, therefore, it is not easy to
understand the neglect that has befallen it, except on the ground that
until lately it has been singularly difficult of access.
Two hundred years ago it must have been much as it is at present.
Turning to the work of the excellent Canon Torrotti, published in 1686, I
find he writes as follows:—
“Oh, what fannings is there not here,” he exclaims, “of the assiduous
Zephyrs; what warmth in winter, what gelidness of the air in summer;
and what freaks are there not of Nature by way of caves, grottoes,
and delicious chambers hewn by her own hand. Here can be enjoyed
wines of the very finest flavour, trout as dainty as can be caught in
any waters, game of the most singular excellence; in short, there is
here a great commodity of everything most sensual and pleasing to the
palate. And of those who come here, above all I must praise the
Piedmontese, who arrive in frequent cavalcades of from twenty to
five-and-twenty people, to an edification which is beyond all praise;
and they are munificent in the gifts they leave behind them to the
Holy Place—not resembling those who are mean towards God though they
will spend freely enough upon their hotel-bill. Carriages of all
sorts can be had here easily; it is the Milanese who for the most
part make use of these carriages and equipages, for they are pompous
and splendid in their carryings on. From elsewhither processions
arrive daily, even from Switzerland, and there are sometimes as many
as ten thousand visitors extraordinary come here in a single day, yet
is there no hindrance but they find comfortable lodging, and at very
reasonable prices.
“As for the distance, it is about sixty miles, or two easy days’
journey from Milan; it is much the same from Turin; it is one day
from Novara, and one from Vercelli; but the most delightful thing
about this journey is that you can combine so many other devotions
along with it. In the Milanese district, for example, there is the
mountain of Varese, and that of S. Carlo of Arona on the Lago
Maggiore; and there are S. Francesco and S. Giulio on the Lago
d’Orta; then there is the Madonna of Oropa in the mountains of
Biella, which sanctuary is in the diocese of Vercelli, as is also S.
Giovanni di Campiglio, the Madonna di Crevacore, and Gattinara; there
is also the Mount Calvary of Domo d’Ossola, on the road towards
Switzerland, and Montrigone below Borgosesia. These, indeed, are but
chapels in imitation of our own Holy Sepulchre, and cannot compare
with it neither in opulence nor in importance; still those of Varese
and Oropa are of some note and wealth. Moreover, the neighbourhood
of this our own Jerusalem is the exact counterpart of that which is
in the Holy Land, having the Mastallone on the one side for the brook
Kedron, and the Sesia for the Jordan, and the lake of Orta for that
of Cæsaræa; while for the Levites there are the fathers of St.
Bernard of Mentone in the Graian and Pennine Alps of Aosta, where
there are so many Roman antiquities that they may be contemplated not
only as monuments of empire, but as also of the vanity of all human
greatness” (pp. 19–21).
A little later the Canon tells us of the antiquity of the councils that
have been held in the neighbourhood, and of one especially:—
“Which was held secretly by five bishops on the summit of one of the
mountains of Sorba in the Val Rassa, which is still hence called the
bishops’ seat; for they came thither as to the place where the five
dioceses adjoined, and each one sat on a stone within the boundary of
his own diocese; and they are those of Novara, Vercelli, Ivrea, Orta,
and Sion. Nor must we forget the signal service rendered to the
universal church in these same mountains of Rassa by the discomfiture
of the heretic monks Gazzari to which end Pope Clement V. in 1307
issued several bulls, and among them one bearing date on the third
day of the ides of August, given at Pottieri, in which he confirmed
the liberty of our people, and acknowledged the Capi as Counts of the
Church . . . For the Valsesian people have been ever free, and by
God’s grace have shaken off the yoke of usurpers while continuing
faithful and profitable subjects of those who have equitably
protected them.”
Torrotti goes on to tell us about the Blessed shepherdess Panesia, a
virgin of the most exquisite beauty, and only fifteen years old, who was
martyred on the 1st of May 1383 on the mountain of S. Giovanni of
Quarona, with three wounds on her head and two on her throat, inflicted
by a wicked stepmother who had a devil, and whose behests she had obeyed
with such consummate sweetness that she had attained perfection; on
which, so invariably do extremes meet, she had to be put to death and
made a martyr; and if we want to know more about her, we can find it in
the work that has been so elegantly written about her by the most
illustrious Father Castiglione Sommasco. Again, there was the famous
miracle in 1333 of S. Maiolo in Val Rassa, which is celebrated every
year, and in virtue of which Pietro, only child of Viscount Emiliano, one
of the three brothers who fought against the heretics, was saved after
having been carried off by a ravenous wolf into the woods of Val Sorba as
far as the fountain named after the rout which this same Count, when he
afterwards grew up, inflicted upon the enemies of the valley in 1377;
wherefore he is seen in an old picture of those times as a child in
swaddling-clothes in the mouth of a wolf, and he gave the name of Fassola
di S. Maiolo to his descendants. Nor, as in private duty bound, can the
worthy Canon forget—
“My own beloved chapel of St. Mary of the Snow, for whose honour and
glory I have done my utmost, at the entrance of the Val Mastallone;
for here on a fragment of ruined wall there grow at all times sundry
flowers, even in the ice and snows of winter; wherefore I had the
distich set up where it may be now seen.”
I have never seen it, but must search for it next time I go to Varallo.
Torrotti presently says that the country being sterile, the people are
hard pressed for food during two-thirds of the year; hence they have
betaken themselves to commerce and to sundry arts, with which they
overrun the world, returning home but once or twice a year, with their
hands well filled with that which they have garnered, to sustain and
comfort themselves with their families; and their toil and the gains that
they have made redound no little to the advantage of the states of Milan
and Piedmont. He again declares that they maintain their liberty,
neither will they brook the least infringement thereon. And their
neighbours, he continues, as well as the dwellers in the valley itself,
are interested in this; for here, as in some desert or peaceful
wilderness, the noble families of Italy and neighbouring provinces have
been ever prone to harbour in times of war and trouble.
Then, later, there comes an account of a battle, which I cannot very well
understand, but it seems to have been fought on the 26th of July 1655.
The Savoyards were on their way to assist at a siege of Pavia, and were
determined to punish the Valsesians _en route_; they had come up from
Romagnano to Borgosesia, when the Valsesians attacked them as they were
at dinner, and shot off the finger of a general officer who was eating an
egg; on this the battle became general, and the Savoyards were caught
every way; for the waters of the Sesia had come down in flood during the
night. The Germans of Alagna, Rima, and Rimella were in it, somehow, and
those of Pregemella in the Val Dobbia. I cannot make out whether the
Pregemella people were Germans or merely people; either way, the
German-speaking villages in the Val Sesia appear to have been the same
two hundred years ago as now. I mean, it does not seem that the
German-speaking race extended lower down the valley then than now. But
at any rate, the queen, or whoever “Madama Reale” may be, was very angry
about the battle.
“It is the custom,” concludes our author, “in token of holy
cheerfulness (_allegria spirituale_) to wear a sprig of pine in the
hat on leaving the holy place, to show that the visitor has been
there; for it has some fine pine trees. This custom was introduced
in royal merriment by Carlo Emmanuele I. He put a sprig in his hat,
and was imitated by all his court, and the ladies wore the same in
their bosom or in their hair. Assuredly it is one of the wonders of
the world to see here, amid the amenities and allurements of the
country, especially during the summer season, what a continuous
_festa_ or holy fair is maintained. For there come and go torrents
of men and women of every nation under heaven. Here you shall see
pilgrims and persons in religion of every description, processions,
prelates, and often princes and princesses, carriages, litters,
calêches, equipages, cavalcades accompanied by trumpeters, gay troops
of cavaliers, and ladies with plumes in their hats and rich apparel
wherewithal to make themselves attractive; and at intervals you shall
hear all manner of songs, concerts, and musical instruments, both
civil and military, all done with a modest and devout cheerfulness of
demeanour, by which I am reminded of nothing so strongly as of the
words of the Psalmist in the which he saith ‘Come and see the works
of the Lord, for He hath done wonders upon earth.’”
It must have been something like our own Tunbridge Wells or Bath in the
last century. Indeed, one is tempted to think that if the sea had come
up to Varallo, it must have been almost more like Margate than Jerusalem.
Nor can we forget the gentle rebuke administered on an earlier page to
those who came neither on business nor for devotion’s sake, but out of
mere idle curiosity, and bringing with them company which the good Canon
designates as scandalous. _Mais nous avons changé tout cela_.
I have allowed myself to quote so freely from Torrotti, as thinking that
the reader will glean more incidentally from these fragments about the
genius of Varallo and its antecedents than he would get from pages of
disquisition on my own part. Returning to the Varallo of modern times, I
would say that even now that the railway has been opened, the pleasantest
way of getting there is still over the Colma from Pella opposite Orta. I
always call this road “the root,” for I once saw it thus described,
obviously in good faith, in the visitors’ book at one of the inns in
Varallo. The gentleman said he had found “the root” without any
difficulty at Pella, had taken it all the way to Varallo, and it was
delicious. He said it was one of the finest “roots” he had ever seen,
and it was only nine or ten miles long.
There were one or two other things in that book, of which, while I am
about it, I should like to deliver my mind. A certain man who wrote a
bold round hand signed his name “Tom Taylor”—doubtless not the late
well-known art critic and dramatic writer, but some other person of the
same name—in the visitors’ book of the Hotel Leone d’Oro at Orta, and
added the word “disgusted.” I saw this entry, then comparatively recent,
in 1871, and on going on to the Hotel d’Italia at Varallo, found it
repeated—“Tom Taylor disgusted.” The entries in each case were probably
aimed at the Sacro Monte, and not at the inn; but they grated on me, as
they must have done on many other English visitors; and I saw with
pleasure that some one had written against the second of them the
following epigram, which is too neat not to be preserved. It ran:—
“Oh wretched Tom Taylor, disgusted at Orta,
At Varallo we find him disgusted again;
The feeling’s contagious, I really have caught a
Disgust for Tom Taylor—he travels in vain.”
Who, I wonder, was it who could fling off such an apt impromptu, and how
many more mute inglorious writers have we not who might do anything they
chose if they would only choose to do anything at all? Some one else had
written on an earlier page;—
1.
“While you’ve that which makes the mare go
You should stay at this albergo,
Bona in esse and in posse
Are dispensed by Joseph Rossi.
2.
“Ask him and he’ll set before ye
Vino birra e liquori,
Asti, Grignolino, Sherry
Prezzi moderati—very.”
There was more, but I have forgotten it. Joseph Rossi was a famous old
waiter long since retired, something like Pietro at the Hotel Rosa Rossa
at Casale, whom all that country side knew perfectly well. This last
entry reminds me of a somewhat similar one which I saw some five and
thirty years ago at the inn at Harlech;—
1.
Τῇδε πᾶν ἄριστον ἔστι
Δεῖπνον οἶνοω και γάλ’ ἤδν.
By this ’ere I mean to testi-
fy how very well they feed you.
2.
“Quam superba sit ruina,
Ipsa sua semper laus,
And the castle—nothing finer,
With its ivy and jackdaws.”
It is a pity the art of writing such pleasing little poems should be now
so generally neglected in favour of more ambitious compositions.
Whatever brevity may be as regards wit it is certainly the soul of all
agreeable poetry.
But again to return to Varallo, or rather to the way of reaching it by
the Colma. There is nothing in North Italy more beautiful than this
walk, with its park-like chestnut-covered slopes of undulating pasture
land dotted about with the finest thatched barns to be found outside
Titian. We might almost fancy that Handel had it in his mind when he
wrote his divine air “Verdi Prati.” Certainly no country can be better
fitted either to the words or music. It continues in full beauty all the
way to Civiasco, where the carriage road begins that now goes down into
the main road between Varallo and Novara, joining it a mile and a half or
so below Varallo.
Close to the point of juncture there is a chapel of singularly graceful
elegant design, called the Madonna di Loreto. To this chapel I will
again return: it is covered with frescoes. Near it there is an open
triangular piece of grass land on which a murderer was beheaded within
the memory of persons still living. A wild old man, who looked like an
executioner broken loose from the flagellation chapel on the Sacro Monte,
but who was quite tame and kind to us when we came to know him, told
Jones and myself this last summer that he remembered seeing the murderer
brought here and beheaded, this being as close as might be to the place
where the murder had been committed. We were at first rather sceptical,
but on inquiry at Varallo found that there had been an execution here,
the last in the open country, somewhere about the year 1835.
From this spot two roads lead to Varallo; one somewhat circuitous by
Mantegna, a village notable for a remarkable fresco outside the church,
in which the Virgin is appearing to a lady and gentleman as they are
lying both of them fast asleep in a large bed, with their two dear little
round heads on a couple of comfortable pillows. The three Magi in the
very interesting frescoes behind the choir in the church of S. Abbondio
at Como are, if I remember, all in one bed when the angel comes to tell
them about the star, and I fancy they have a striped counterpane, but it
is some time since I saw the frescoes; at any rate the angel was not a
lady. We had often before seen the Virgin appear to a lady in bed, and
even to a gentleman in bed, but never before to a lady and a gentleman
both in the same bed. She is not, however, so much appearing to them as
sitting upon them, and I should say she was pretty heavy. The fresco is
dated 1641.
The other road is the direct one, and passes the old church of St. Mark,
outside which there are some charming fifteenth-century frescoes by
nobody in particular, and among them a cow who, at the instance of St.
Mark, is pinning a bear or wolf to a tree in a most resolute determined
manner.
There are other frescoes on this church by the Varallese painter Luini
(not to be confounded with Bernardino), but I do not remember them as
remarkable.
Up to this point the two highest peaks of Monte Rosa are still visible
when clouds permit; here they disappear behind nearer mountains, and in a
few more hundred yards Varallo is entered.
CHAPTER IV.
_BERNARDINO CAIMI_, _AND FASSOLA_.
IN geographical position Varallo is the most western city of North Italy
in which painting and sculpture were endemic. Turin, Novara, Vercelli,
Casale, Ivrea, Biella, Alessandria, and Aosta have no endemic art
comparable to that of the cities east of Milan. Bergamo, Brescia,
Verona, Vicenza, Padua, not to mention Venice and the cities of the
Friuli, not only produced artists who have made themselves permanently
famous, but are themselves, in their architecture and external features
generally, works of art as impressive as any they contain; they are
stamped with the widely-spread instinctive feeling for beauty with which
the age and people that reared them must assuredly have been inspired.
The eastern cities have perhaps suffered more from war, nevertheless it
is hard to think that the beauty so characteristic of the eastern
Lombardic cities should fail so conspicuously, at least by comparison, in
the western, if the genius of the places had been the same. All cities
are symptomatic of the men who built them, towns no less than bodily
organisation being that unknown something which we call mind or spirit
made manifest in material form. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and
Italians—to name them in alphabetical order, are not more distinct in
their several faults and virtues than are London, Paris, Berlin, and
Rome, in the impression they leave on those who see them. How closely in
each case does the appearance of the city correspond with the genius of
the nation of which it is the capital. The same holds good more or less
with the provincial cities of any country. They have each in a minor
degree their distinctive evidences of character, and it will hardly be
denied that while the North Italian genius is indebted to the cities of
Piedmont for perhaps its more robust and vigorous elements, it owes its
command of beauty whether of form or colour to Lombardy rather than to
Piedmont. It seems to have been ordained that an endemic interest in art
should not cross the Po northward to the west of the Ticino, and to this
rule Varallo is only partially an exception; the reasons which led to its
being an exception at all will be considered presently. I know, of
course, that Novara, and still more Vercelli, contain masterpieces by
Gaudenzio Ferrari, but in each case the art was exotic, and with the not
very noteworthy exceptions of Lanini, Difendente Ferrari di Chivasso, and
Macrino d’Alba, I do not at the moment call to mind the name of a single
even high second-class painter or sculptor who has hailed from west of
the Valsesia.
The exceptional position of Varallo as regards North Italian art must be
referred mainly to its selection by Bernardino Caimi as the site for the
New Jerusalem which he founded there at the end of the fifteenth century;
a few words, therefore, concerning him will not be out of place here; I
learn from Torrotti that he was a “Frate Minore Osservante di S.
Francesco,” and came of the noble and illustrious Milanese family of the
Counts Caimi. He had been Patriarch of the Holy Land, and, as I find
stated in Signor Galloni’s excellent work already referred to, {40} had
been employed on important missions in the island of Cyprus, chiefly in
connection with the reformation of abuses. Full of zeal and devotion he
returned to his native country, and ere long conceived the design of
reproducing in Italy a copy of the most important sites in the Holy Land,
for the comfort and greater commodity of so many Christians who, being
unable to commit themselves to long and weary voyages by land and sea,
and among infidels, might gather thence some portion of that spiritual
fruit which were otherwise beyond their reach.
Old and mendicant as he was, he was nothing daunted by the magnitude of
the task before him, and searched Lombardy from one end to the other in
his desire to provide Providence with a suitable abode. For a long while
he sought in vain, and could find no place that was really like
Jerusalem, but at last, towards the end of 1491, he came to Varallo
alone, and had hardly got there before he felt himself rapt into an
ecstasy, in the which he was drawn towards the Sacro Monte; when he got
up to the plain on the top of the mountain which was then called “La
Parete,” perceiving at once its marvellous resemblance to Jerusalem, even
to the existence of another mountain hard by which was like Calvary, he
threw himself on the ground and thanked God in a transport of delight.
It is said that for some time previously the shepherds who watched their
flocks on this solitary height had been talking of nothing but of
heavenly harmonies that had been heard coming from the sky; that Caimi
himself while yet in the Holy Land had been shown this place in a vision;
and that on reaching an eminence called Sceletta he had been conducted to
the site itself by the song of a bird which sang with such extraordinary
sweetness that he had been constrained to follow it.
I should have set this bird down as a blue rock thrush or _passero
solitario_, for I know these birds breed yearly on the Sacro Monte, and
no bird sings so sweetly as they do, but we are expressly told that Caimi
did not reach Varallo till the end of the year, and the _passeri
solitarii_ have all migrated by the end of August. We have seen,
however, that Milano Scarrognini actually founded a chapel in October
1491, so Torrotti is wrong in his date, and Caimi may have come in 1490,
and perhaps in August, before the _passeri_ were gone. There can be
little doubt in fact that he came, or at any rate chose his site, before
1486.
Whatever the bird may have been, Caimi now communicated his design to the
Consiglio della Vicinanza at Varallo, through Milano de’ Scarrognini, who
was a member of the body, and who also gave support in money;
negotiations were not finally concluded until the 14th of April 1493, on
which day, as we have already seen, the site of the monastery of S. Maria
della Grazie was conveyed to the Padri dell’ Osservanza with the
concession of a right to build their New Jerusalem on the adjoining
mountain—which they had already begun to do for some time past.
Divine assistance was manifest in the ease with which everything had been
arranged, but Torrotti goes on to assure us that it was presently made
still clearer. The design had been to begin with a reproduction of the
Holy Sepulchre, and hardly had the workmen begun to dig for the
foundation of this first work, when a stone was found, not only
resembling the one which covered the actual Holy Sepulchre itself, but an
absolute facsimile of it in all respects—as like it, in fact, or even
more so, than Varallo was to Jerusalem. The testimony to this was so
notorious, and the fact was so soon and widely known, that pilgrims
flocked in crowds and brought gifts enough to bring the first abode of
the Fathers with the chapel beside it to a speedy and successful
completion. Everything having been now started auspiciously, and the
Blessed Bernardino having been allowed to look, as it were, into the
promised land, God took him to Himself on the 5th day of the Ides of
February 1496, or—as I have above said that the inscription on Caimi’s
tomb declares—in 1499.
The churches, both the one below the mountain in which Gaudenzio’s great
series of frescoes may be still seen, and the one on the top, which stood
on the site now occupied by the large house that stands to the right of
the present church, and is called the Casino, were consecrated between
the 5th and 7th days of September 1501, and by this time several of the
chapels with figures in them had been taken in hand, and were well
advanced if not completed.
Fassola’s version of Bernardino Caimi’s visit is more guarded than
Torrotti’s is. Before going on to it I will say here the little that
need be said about Fassola himself. I find from Signor Galloni’s “Uomini
e fatti” (p. 208) that he was born at Rassa above Bucioleto in the Val
Grande, on the 19th of September 1648. His family had one house at
Rassa, and another at Varallo, which last is believed to have been what
is now the hotel Croce Bianca, at which I always myself stay. Torrotti,
in his preface, claims to have been one of his masters; he also says that
Fassola was only eighteen when he wrote his work on the Sacro Monte, and
that he had published a work when he was only fourteen. The note given
by Signor Galloni [p. 233] settles it that Fassola was born “anno D. 1648
die 19 septembris hora 22 min. 30,” so that either the book lay some
years unpublished, or he was over twenty when he wrote it. Like the
edition of Caccia already referred to, it is dated a year later than the
one in which it actually appeared, so that the present custom of
post-dating late autumn books is not a new one. In the preface the
writer speaks of his pen as being “tenera non tanto per talento quanto
per l’età.” In the same preface he speaks of himself as having a double
capacity, one as a Delegate to the governing body of the valley, and the
other as a canon; but he must mean some kind of lay canon, for I cannot
find that he was ever ordained. In 1672 he published his work “La
Valsesia descritta,” which according to Signor Galloni is more hastily
written than his earlier work. On the 14th of December, the same year,
he left the Valsesia and travelled to France, keeping a journal for some
time, which Signor Galloni tells us still existed in 1873 in the
possession of Abate Cav. Carestia of Riva Valdobbia. He went to Paris,
and appears to have stayed there till 1683, when he returned to Varallo,
and the Valsesia.
He found his country torn by faction, and was immediately hailed by all
parties as the one man whom all could agree to elect as Regent General of
the Valley. He was elected, and on the 5th of October convened his first
general council of the Valsesia. He seems to have been indefatigable as
an administrator during the short time he held office, but in the year
1684 was deposed by the Milanese, who on the 3rd of December sent a body
of armed men to seize him and take him to Milan. He was warned in time
to fly, and escaped to France, where according to some he died, while
others say that he settled in Poland and there attained high distinction.
Nothing, however, is known for certain about him later than the year 1684
or the beginning of 1685.
In 1686 Torrotti published his book. He says that Fassola during his
regency repeatedly desired him “ripigliare questa relatione per commodità
dei Pelegrini, Divoti, visitanti,” and that so much new matter had come
to light since Fassola’s time that a new work was called for. Fassola,
he says, even in the midst of his terrible misfortunes, continued to take
the warmest interest in his native city, and in the Sacro Monte, where it
appears he had been saluted by a very memorable and well-known miracle,
which was so well known in Torrotti’s time that it was not necessary to
tell us what it was. Fassola may or may not have urged Torrotti to write
a second work upon the Sacro Monte, but he can hardly have intended him
to make it little more than a transcript of his own book. If new facts
had come to light they do not appear in Torrotti’s pages. He very rarely
adds to Fassola, and never corrects him; when Fassola is wrong Torrotti
is wrong also; even when something is added I have a strong suspicion
that it comes from Fassola’s second book. On the whole I am afraid I
regard Torrotti as somewhat of a plagiarist—at least as regards his
matter, for his manner is his own and is very quaint, garrulous, and
pleasing.
Fassola’s work is full of inaccuracies, and of such inaccuracies as can
only be explained on the supposition that the writer resided mainly at
Rassa, wrote his book there, and relied too much upon notes which he did
not verify after his work was written. Nevertheless, as Signor Galloni
justly says, “he must be allowed the merit of having preserved an immense
mass of matter from otherwise almost certain destruction, and his pages
when subjected to rigid examination and criticism furnish abundant
material to the writer of genuine history.”
He leans generally much less towards the miraculous than Torrotti does.
After saying, for example, that Bernardino Caimi had returned from
Jerusalem in 1481 full of devotion and with the fixed intention of
reproducing the Holy City on Italian soil, he continues:—
“With this holy intent the good ecclesiastic journeyed to the
mountains of Biella, and thence to the Val d’Ossola, and thence to
several places in the Valsesia, which of all others was the valley in
which he was most inclined to unburden his mind of the treasure of
his heroic design. Finally, arriving at Varallo, as the place of
most resort, where most of those would come whose means and goodwill
would incline them to works of piety, he resolved to choose the most
suitable site that he could here find. According to some, while
taking counsel with himself and with all who could help him, the site
which we now adore was shown him in a vision; others say that on
walking without the town he was seduced by the angelic warbling of a
bird, and thus ravished to a spot where he found all things in such
order for his design that he settled upon it then and there. Many
hold as true the story of certain shepherds who about a fortnight
earlier than the coming of the father, heard songs of more than
earthly sweetness as they were keeping watch over their flocks by
night.”
“But,” concludes Fassola, with some naiveté considering the reserve he
has shown in accepting any of the foregoing stories, “take it in whatever
way you will, the inception of the place was obviously miraculous.”
CHAPTER V.
_EARLY HISTORY OF THE SACRO MONTE_.
WHETHER miraculous or not, the early history of the Sacro Monte is
undoubtedly obscure, and the reader will probably have ere this perceived
that the accounts given by Fassola and Torrotti stand in some need of
reconstruction. The resemblance between Varallo and Jerusalem is too far
fetched to have had any _bonâ fide_ effect upon a man of travel and of
affairs, such as Caimi certainly was; it is hardly greater than the
famous one between Monmouth and Macedon; there is, indeed, a river—not to
say two—at Varallo, and there is a river also only twenty-five miles off
Jerusalem; doubtless at one time or another there have been crucifixions
in both, but some other reason must be sought for the establishment of a
great spiritual stronghold at the foot of the Alps, than a mere desire to
find the place which should most remind its founder of the Holy City.
Why this great effort in a remote and then almost inaccessible province
of the Church, far from any of the religious centres towards which one
would have expected it to gravitate? The answer suggests itself as
readily as the question; namely, that it was an attempt to stem the
torrent of reformed doctrines already surging over many an Alpine pass,
and threatening a moral invasion as fatal to the spiritual power of Rome
as earlier physical invasions of Northmen had been to her material power.
Those who see the Italian sub-alpine valleys of to-day as devoted to the
Church of Rome are apt to forget how nearly they fell away from her in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what efforts, both by way of
punishment and allurement, she was compelled to make before she could
retain them in her grasp. In most of them the ferment caused by the
introduction of the reformed doctrines was in the end stamped out; but in
some, as in the Valle di Poschiavo, and the Val Bregaglia, Protestantism
is still either the predominant creed or not uncommon. I do not mention
the Vaudois valleys of Piedmont, for I am told these were Protestant
before either Huss or Luther preached.
The Valsesians had ere now given proof of a tendency towards heresy, but
they were a people whom it was worth while making every effort to retain.
They have ever been, as we have seen it said already, a vigorous, sturdy,
independent race, imbued, in virtue perhaps of their mixed descent, with
a large share of the good points both of Southern and Northern nations.
They are Italians; but Italians of the most robust and Roman type,
combining in a remarkable degree Southern grace and versatility with
Northern enterprise and power of endurance. It is no great stretch of
imagination to suppose that Bernardino Caimi was alive to dangers that
were sufficiently obvious, and that he began with the Val Sesia, partly
as of all the sub-alpine valleys the one most imbued with German
blood—the one in which to this day the German language has lingered
longest, and in which, therefore, ideas derived from Germany would most
easily be established—and partly because of the quasi-independence of the
Val Sesia, and of its lying out of the path of those wars from which the
plains of Lombardy have been rarely long exempt. It may be noted that
the movement set on foot by Caimi extended afterwards to other places,
always, with the exception of Crea, on the last slopes of the Alps before
the plains of Lombardy and Piedmont begin. Varese, Locarno, Orta,
Varallo, Oropa, Graglia, St. Ignazio, not to mention St. Giovanni di
Andorno, have all of them something of the spiritual frontier fortress
about them, and, I imagine, are all more or less directly indebted to the
reformation for their inception.
Confining our attention to Varallo, the history of the Sacro Monte
divides itself into two main periods; the first, from the foundation to
the visit of S. Carlo Borromeo in 1678; the second, from the visit of S.
Carlo to the present day. The first of these periods begins with 1486,
in which year the present Sacro Monte was no doubt formally contemplated,
if not actually commenced. That it was contemplated is shown by the
inscription on Caimi’s grave already given, and also by the first of the
two deeds given in Signor Galloni’s notes, from which it appears {52}
that under the brief of December 21, 1486, Caimi had powers to take over
the land now covered by the chapels, _even though he should be absent_—it
being evidently intended that the land should be conveyed at once, and
before he could return from Jerusalem, for which place he started in
1487. Moreover, there remains one small chapel with frescoes that can
hardly be later than 1485–1490. This is now numbered 45, and is supposed
by many to be older even than Caimi’s first visit. It may be so, but
there is nothing to show that it actually was. I have seen a date
scratched on it which it is said is 1437, but the four is really a five,
which in old writing is often taken for a four, and the frescoes, which
in their own way are of considerable merit, would be most naturally
assigned to about the date 1485–1490. I do not think there can be a
doubt that we have in this chapel the earliest existing building on the
Sacro Monte, but find it impossible to form any opinion as to whether it
was in existence before Bernardino Caimi’s time, or no.
In the second of the two deeds given by Signor Galloni (p. 85), the
following passage occurs:—
“Et similiter fecerunt ipsi Sindici, et Procuratores, ut suprà
introducendo ipsum Patrem Vicarium ut suprà in Eremitorium sancti
Sepulchri existent. in loco ubi dicebatur super pariete, aperiendo
eidem ostia dicti Eremitorij, et dando eidem claues Ostiorum dicti
eremitorij, et eum deambulari faciendo in eo, et similiter in Hortis
dicti Eremitorij, dando eidem in gremium ut suprà de terris, herbis,
et frondibus, et lapidibus existen. in locis prædictis, _et similiter
in Capella existente subtus crucem_, _et in Capellam Ascensionis
Ædificatam super Monte prædicto_. Qui locus est de membris dicti
Monasterii suprascripti.”
Neither Signor Galloni, who pointed out this passage to me, nor I, though
we have more than once discussed the matter on the ground itself, can
arrive at any conclusion as to what was intended by “the chapel now in
existence under the cross,” nor yet what chapel is intended by “the
chapel of the Ascension on the said mountain.” It is probable that there
was an early chapel of the Ascension, and the wooden figure of Christ on
the fountain in the piazza before the church was very likely taken from
it, but there is no evidence to show where it stood.
Signor Arienta tells me that the chapel now occupied by the Temptation in
the Wilderness was formerly a chapel of the Ascension. He told me to go
round to the back of this chapel, and I should find it was earlier than
appeared from the front. I did so, and saw it had formerly fronted the
other way to what it does now, but among the many dates scrawled on it
could find none earlier than 1506, and it is not likely to have been
built thirteen years before it got scrawled on.
Some hold the chapels referred to in the deed above quoted from to have
included the present Annunciation, Salutation, and sleeping St. Joseph
block—or part of it. Others hold them to have referred to the chapels
now filled by the Pietà and the Entombment (Nos. 40 and 41); but it
should not be forgotten that by 1493 the chapels of S. Francis and the
Holy Sepulchre were already in existence, though no mention is made of
them; and there may have been other chapels also already built of which
no mention is made. Thus immediately outside the St. Francis chapel and
towards the door leading to the Holy Sepulchre, there is a small recess
in which is placed an urn of iron that contains the head of Bernardino
Caimi with a Latin inscription; and hard by there is another inscription
which runs as follows:—
“Magnificus D. Milanus Scarrogninus hoc Sepulcrum cum fabrica sibi
contigua Christo posuit die septimo Octobris MCCCCLXXXXI. R. P.
Frater Bernardinus de Mediolano Ordinis Minorum de Observ. sacra
hujus montis excogitavit loca, ut hic Hierusalem videat qui peragrare
nequit.”
We may say with some confidence that the present chapel No. 45, those
numbered 40 and 41, the block containing the St. Francis and Holy
Sepulchre chapels, and probably the Presepio, Adoration of the Shepherds,
and Circumcision chapels—though it may be doubted whether these last
contained the figures that they now do—were in existence before the year
1500. Part if not all of the block containing the Sta. Casa di Loreto,
in which the Annunciation is now found, is also probably earlier than
1500, as also an early Agony in the Garden now long destroyed, but of
which we are told that the figures were originally made of wood. Over
and above these there was a Cena, Capture, Flagellation, and an Ascension
chapel, all of which contained wooden figures, and cannot be dated later
than the three or four earliest years of the sixteenth century. No
wooden figure is to be dated later than this, for when once an oven for
baking clay had been made (and this must have been done soon after
Gaudenzio took the works on the Sacro Monte in hand) the use of wood was
discarded never to be resumed.
According to both Fassola and Torrotti, the first chapel erected on the
Sacro Monte was that of S. Francesco, with its adjacent reproduction of
the Holy Sepulchre. According to Bordiga the first was the entombment,
containing nine figures of wood, or, as the earlier writers say, eight.
Bordiga probably means that the Entombment was the earliest chapel with
figures in it, and the other writers that the St. Francis chapel was the
first in which mass was said. These last speak very highly of the wooden
figures in the Entombment chapel, and so more guardedly does Bordiga. I
will return to them when I come to the present group of nine by Luigi
Marchesi, a sculptor of Saltrio, which were substituted for the old ones
in 1826. The early writers say that there was no fresco background to
this chapel, and this suggests that the attempt to combine sculpture and
painting was not part of the initial scheme, though soon engrafted on to
it, inasmuch as this is the only chapel about which I find it expressly
stated by early writers that it was without a fresco background (“senza
pittura alcuna”). {57} Though there was no fresco background, Bordiga
says there was a fresco painted, doubtless done very early in his career,
by Gaudenzio Ferrari, outside the chapel just above the iron grating
through which the visitor must look. Probably the original scheme was to
have sculptured figures inside the chapels, and frescoes outside; by an
easy modification these last were transferred from the outside to the
inside, and so designed as to form an integral part of the composition:
the daring scheme of combining the utmost resources of both painting and
sculpture in a single work was thus gradually evolved rather than arrived
at _per saltum_. Assuming, however, the currently received date of 1503
or 1504 as correct for Gaudenzio’s frescoes in the present Pietà chapel,
the conception as carried out in the greater number of the existing
chapels had then attained the shape from which no subsequent departure
was made.
Returning to Gaudenzio’s fresco outside the S. Francesco chapel, Bordiga
says that Caccia gave the following lines on this work:—
“Sotto un vicino portico di fuore
Portato a sepelir è di pittura
Un Cristo; che non mai Zeuxi pittore
Di questo finse piu bella figura,
Che un San Francesco possa pareggiare,
Pinto più inanzi sopra d’un altare.”
The reader will note that the fresco is here expressly stated to be “di
fuore” or outside and not inside the chapel.
Both Fassola and Torrotti place this fresco on the outside wall of the
chapel of St. Francis, but Bordiga is probably right in saying it was on
the Entombment chapel. No trace of it remains, nor yet of the other
works by Gaudenzio, which all three writers agree were in the S.
Francesco chapel, though they must all have been some few years later
than the chapel itself. These consisted of portraits of Milano
Scarrognini with Father Beato Candido Ranzo Bernardino Caimi upon the
gospel, or right, side of the altar, and of Scarrognini’s wife and son
with Bernardino Caimi, on the epistle side. According to Bordiga,
Gaudenzio also painted a St. Anthony of Padua, and a St. Helena, one on
either side the grating. Inside the chapel over the altar was a painting
of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, also by Gaudenzio. This is the
only one of his works in or about the S. Francesco chapel which still
exists; it is now in the pinacoteca of the Museum at Varallo, but is not,
so far as I could judge of it, one of his best pictures. The other works
were in a decayed condition in 1703, when they were removed, and the
chapel was redecorated by Francesco Leva, a painter of Milan.
The Crucifixion chapel of Gaudenzio Ferrari was begun and finished
between 1520 and 1530. I have found three excellently written dates of
1529 scrawled upon the fresco background. One of them, “1529 Die 26
Octobre Johannes Antoninus,” is especially clear, and the other two leave
no doubt what year was intended. I have found no earlier date, but
should not be surprised if further search were more successful. I may
say in passing that it seemed to me as though some parts of the scar made
by the inscription had been filled with paint, while others had certainly
not—as though the work had been in parts retouched, not so very long ago.
I think this is so, but two or three to whom I showed what I took to be
the new colour were not convinced, so I must leave others to decide the
point.
The Magi chapel must be assigned to some date between the years 1530 and
1539—I should say probably to about 1538, but I will return to this later
on. Torrotti says that some of the figures on the Christ taken for the
last time before Pilate (chapel No. 32) are by Gaudenzio, as also some
paintings that were preserved when the Palazzo di Pilato was built, but I
can see no sign of either one or the other now; nevertheless it is likely
enough that several figures—transformed as we shall presently see that
d’Enrico or his assistants knew very well how to transform them—are doing
duty in the Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, and Ecce Homo chapels. So cunningly
did the workmen of that time disguise a figure when they wanted to alter
its character and action that it would be no easy matter to find out
exactly what was done; if they could turn an Eve, as they did, into a
very passable Roman soldier assisting at the capture of Christ, they
could make anything out of anything. A figure was a figure, and was not
to be thrown away lightly.
Soon after the completion of the Magi chapel the work flagged in
consequence of the wars then devastating the provinces of North Italy;
nevertheless by the middle of the sixteenth century we learn from
Torrotti that some nineteen chapels had been completed.
It is idle to spend much time in guessing which these chapels were, when
Caccia’s work, published in 1565, is sure to be found some day and will
settle the matter authoritatively, but the reader will not be far wrong
if he sees the Sacro Monte by the year 1550 as consisting of the
following chapels: Adam and Eve, Annunciation, Salutation (?), Magi,
Adoration of the Infant Jesus by the Shepherds, Adoration by Joseph and
Mary, Circumcision, (but not the present figures nor fresco background),
Last Supper, Agony in the Garden, Capture, Flagellation, Crowning with
thorns (?), Christ taken for the last time before Pilate, the Original
journey to Calvary, Fainting Madonna, Crucifixion, Entombment, Ascension,
and the old church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary now removed.
There were probably one or two others, but there cannot have been many.
In the 1586 edition of Caccia, a MS. copy of which I have before me, the
chapels are given as follows: Adam and Eve, Annunciation, and Santa Casa
di Loreto, Visit of Mary to Elizabeth, Magi, Joseph and Mary worshipping
the Infant Christ, and the Adoration of Shepherds, {62} Circumcision,
Joseph warned to fly, the chapel (but not the figures) of the Massacre of
the Innocents, Flight into Egypt Baptism, Temptation in the Wilderness,
Woman of Samaria, the chapel (but not the figures) of the Healing of the
Paralytic, and the Raising of the Widow’s son at Nain, the Raising of
Lazarus, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, Agony in the
Garden, Capture, Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, Christ carrying His
cross to Calvary (doubtless Tabachetti’s chapel), the Fainting of the
Virgin, the earlier Journey to Calvary by Gaudenzio (now dispersed or
destroyed), Crucifixion, Pietà, Holy Sepulchre, Appearance to Mary
Magdalene (now no longer existing).
I should say, however, that I find it impossible to reconcile the two
accounts of the journeys to Calvary, given in the prose introduction to
this work, and in the poetical description that follows it, or rather to
understand the topography of the poetical version at all, for the prose
account is plain enough. I shall place a MS. copy of the 1586 edition of
Caccia’s book in the British Museum, before this present volume is
published, and will leave other students of Valsesian history to be more
fortunate if they can. Poetical descriptions are so far better than
prose, inasmuch as there is generally less of them in a page, but on the
whole prose has the advantage.
It would be interesting to see the 1565 and 1576 editions of Caccia, and
note the changes and additions that can be found in them. The
differences between the 1586 and 1590 editions (dated 1587 and 1591—the
preface to the second being dated September 25, 1589), are enough to
throw considerable additional light upon the history of the place, and
if, as I believe likely, we find no mention of Tabachetti’s Calvary
chapel in the edition of 1576, nor of his other chapels, we should be
able to date his arrival at Varallo within a very few years, and settle a
question which, until these two editions of Caccia are found, appears
insoluble. I must be myself content with pointing out these _libri
desiderati_ to the future historian.
Some say that the work on the Sacro Monte was almost discontinued between
the years 1540 and 1580. I cannot, however, find that this was so,
though it appears to have somewhat flagged. I cannot tell whether
Tabachetti came to Varallo before S. Carlo or after him. If before, then
a good deal of the second impetus may be due to the sculptor rather than
to the saint; if after, and as a consequence of S. Carlo’s visit, then
indeed S. Carlo must be considered as the second founder of the place;
but whatever view is taken about this, S. Carlo’s visit in 1578 is
convenient as marking a new departure in the history of the Sacro Monte,
and he may be fairly called its second founder.
Giussano gives the following account of his first visit, which makes us
better understand the austere expression that reigns on S. Carlo’s face,
as we see it represented in his portraits:—
“It was two o’clock in the day before St. Charles arrived at this
place, and he had not broken his fast, but before taking anything he
visited the different chapels for meditation, of which Father Adorno
gave him the points. As evening drew on, he withdrew to take his
refection of bread and water, and then returned again to the chapels
till after midnight though the weather was very cold” [end of October
or beginning of November]. “He then took two hours’ rest on a chair,
and at five o’clock in the morning resumed his devotions; then, after
having said his Mass, he again allowed himself a small portion of
bread and water, and continued his journey to Milan, renewed in
fervour of spirit, and with a firm determination to begin again to
serve God with greater energy than ever.” {65}
Surely one may add “according to his lights” after the words “to serve
God.” The second visit of St. Charles to Varallo, a few days before his
death, is even more painful reading, and the reader may be referred for
an account of it to chapter xi. of the second volume of the work last
quoted from. He had a cell in the cloister, where he slept on a wooden
bed, which is still shown and venerated, and used to spend hours in
contemplating the various sacred mysteries, but most especially the Agony
in the Garden, near which a little shelter was made for him, and in which
he was praying when his impending death was announced to him by an angel.
But this chapel, which was near the present Transfiguration Chapel, was
destroyed and rebuilt on its present site after his death, as also the
Cena Chapel, which originally contained frescoes by Bernardino Lanini.
It was on the Sacro Monte that S. Carlo discharged his last public
functions, after which, feeling that he had taken a chill, he left
Varallo on the 29th of October 1584, and died at Milan six days
afterwards.
At S. Carlo’s instance Pellegrino Pellegrini, called Tibaldi, made a new
design for the Sacro Monte, which was happily never carried out, but
which I am told involved the destruction of many of the earlier chapels.
He made the plan of the Sacro Monte as it stood in his time, which I have
already referred to, and designed the many chapels mentioned in the 1586
edition of Caccia as about to be built. Prominent among these was the
Temple of Solomon, which was to involve “_una spesa grandissima_,” and
was to be as like the real temple as it could be made. Inside it were to
be groups of figures representing Christ driving out those that bought
and sold, and it was to have a magnificent marble portico.
The Palazzo di Pilato, which, as the name denotes, is devoted to the
sufferings of Christ under Pontius Pilate, was actually carried out,
though not till some years after S. Carlo’s death, and not according to
Pellegrini’s design. It is most probable that the designer of the
Palazzo di Pilato, and of the Caiaphas and Herod chapels as we now see
them, was Giovanni d’Enrico. “It was in 1608,” says Bordiga, {66}
writing of the Santa Scala, which leads from the Crowning with Thorns to
the Ecce Homo chapels, and which, one would say, must have been one of
the first things done when the Palazzo di Pilato was made, “that this
work with its steps, exactly twenty-eight in number, was begun, according
to the design obtained from Rome by Francesco Testa, who was then
Fabbriciere. This is for the information of those who think it is the
work of Pellegrini.”
Between this year and 1645 the four Pilate chapels, the Ecce Homo,
Caiaphas, Herod, present Pietà, Sleeping Apostles, Agony in the Garden,
and Christ Nailed to the Cross chapels were either created or
reconstructed. These works bear d’Enrico’s name in the guide-books, and
he no doubt presided over the work that was done in them; but I should
say that by far the greater number of the figures in them are by Giacomo
Ferro, his assistant, to whom I will return presently, or by other pupils
and assistants. Only one chapel, the Transfiguration, belongs to the
second half of the seventeenth century, and one, the Christ before Annas,
to the eighteenth (1765); one—the present Entombment—belongs to the
nineteenth, and one or two have been destroyed, as has been unfortunately
the case with the Chiesa Vecchia; but the plan of the Sacro Monte in
1671, which I here give, will show that it was not much different then
from what it is at present. The numbers on the chapels are explained as
follows:—
1. Gate.
2. Creation of the world and Adam and Eve.
3. Annunciation.
4. Salutation.
5. First vision of St. Joseph.
6. Magi.
7. Nativity.
8. Circumcision.
9. Second vision of St. Joseph.
10. Flight into Egypt.
11. Massacre of the Innocents.
12. Baptism.
13. Temptation.
14. Woman of Samaria.
15. Healing the Paralytic.
16. Widow’s son at Nain.
17. Transfiguration.
18. Raising of Lazarus.
19. Entry into Jerusalem.
20. Last Supper.
21. Agony in the Garden.
22. Sleeping Apostles.
23. Capture.
24. Caiaphas, and Penitence of St. Peter.
25. Christ before Pilate.
26. Christ before Herod.
27. Christ sent again to Pilate.
28. Flagellation.
29. Crowning with thorns.
30. Christ about to ascend the Santa Scala (not shown on plan).
31. Ecce Homo.
32. Pilate washes his hands.
33. Christ condemned to death.
34. Christ carrying the Cross.
35. Nailing to the Cross.
36. Passion.
37. Deposition from the Cross.
38. Pietà.
39. Entombment (not shown on plan).
40. Chapel of St. Francis.
41. Holy Sepulchre.
42. Appearance to Mary Magdalene.
43. Infancy of the Virgin.
44. Sepulchre of the Virgin.
45. Sepulchre of St. Anne.
46. Ascended Christ over the fountain.
47. Chiesa Vecchia.
48. Chiesa Maggiore.
The view is a bird’s-eye one, and there is hardly any hill in reality.
[Picture: Plate I: Plan of the Sacro Monte in 1671]
CHAPTER VI.
_PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS_.
THE foregoing outline of the history of the work must suffice for the
present. I will reserve further remarks for the space which I will
devote to each individual chapel. As regards the particular form the
work took, I own that I have been at times inclined to wonder whether
Leonardo da Vinci may not have had something to do with it.
Between 1481 and the end of 1499 he was in Milan, and during the later
years of this period was the chief authority on all art matters. It is
not easy to think that Caimi, who was a Milanese, would not consult him
before embarking upon an art enterprise of the first magnitude; and
certainly there is a something in the idea of turning the full strength
of both painting and sculpture at once on to a single subject, which
harmonises well with the magnificent rashness of which we know Leonardo
to have been capable, and with the fact that he was both a painter and a
sculptor himself. There is, however, not one scrap of evidence in
support of this view, which is based solely on the fact that both the
scheme and Leonardo were audacious, and that the first is little likely
to have been undertaken without counsel from the second. The actual
evidence points rather, as already indicated, in the direction of
thinking that the frescoes began outside the chapels, got inside them for
shelter, and ere long claimed the premises as belonging no less to
themselves than to the statues. The idea of treating full-relief
sculptured figures with a view to a pictorial rather than sculpturesque
effect was in itself, as undertaken when Gaudenzio was too young to have
had a voice in the matter, a daring innovation, even without the adjunct
of a fresco background; and the idea of taking a mountain as though it
were a book, and illustrating it with a number of such groups, was more
daring still. To this extent we may perhaps suppose Caimi to have been
indebted to Leonardo da Vinci: the rest is probably due to Gaudenzio, who
evolved it in the course of those unforeseen developments of which design
and judgment are never slow to take advantage.
To whomsoever the conception may be due, if it had only been carried out
by such artists as Tabachetti and Gaudenzio Ferrari, or even Giovanni
d’Enrico, to say nothing of Bargnola or Rossetti, (to whichever of the
two the Massacre of the Innocents must be assigned,) works like those at
Varallo might have been repeated, as indeed they sometimes were,
thenceforward to the present day. Unfortunately the same thing was
attempted at Orta, and later on at Varese, by greatly inferior men. It
is true that some of the groups at Varese, especially the one in the
Disputa Chapel, are exceedingly fine, and that there are few chapels even
there in which no good or even admirable figures may be found. Still the
prevailing spirit at Varese is stagey; the work belongs to an age when
art of all kinds was held to consist mainly in exaggeration, and when
freedom from affectation had fallen into a disrepute from which it has
taken centuries to emerge. Nevertheless the work at Varese is for the
most part able; if at times somewhat boisterous and ranting, it is
incomparably above the feeble, silly cant of Orta; but unfortunately it
is by Orta that English people for the most part judge the attempt to
combine sculpture and painting. It is indeed some years since I was at
this last-named place, and remembering how long I knew the Sacro Monte at
Varallo without observing the Vecchietto in the Descent from the Cross
Chapel, I cannot be sure that there is not some more interesting work at
Orta than I now know. I do not think, however, I am far wrong in saying
that the chapels at Orta are for the most part exceedingly bad.
So are some even at Varallo itself, but assuredly not most of them.
One—I mean, of course, Tabachetti’s Journey to Calvary, which contains
about forty figures rather larger than life, and nine horses,—is of such
superlative excellence as regards composition and dramatic power, to say
nothing of the many admirable individual figures comprised in it, that it
is not too much to call it the most astounding work that has ever been
achieved in sculpture. I know that this is strong language, but have
considered my words as much as I care to do. As Michael Angelo’s
Medicean Chapel errs on the side of over-subtlety, refinement, and the
exaggerated idealism from which indeed there is but one step to the
_barocco_, so does Tabachetti’s on that of over-downrightness, or, as a
critic with a cultivated eye might say, with perhaps a show of reason at
a first glance, even of vulgarity. Nevertheless, if I could have my
choice whether to have created Michael Angelo’s chapel or Tabachetti’s, I
should not for a moment hesitate about choosing Tabachetti’s, though it
drove its unhappy creator mad, which the Medicean chapel never did by
Michael Angelo. Three other chapels by Tabachetti are also admirable
works. Two chapels contain very extensive frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari,
than which it is safe to say that no finer works of their kind have been
preserved to us. The statues by Gaudenzio in the same chapels are all
interesting, and some remarkably good. Their arrangement in the
Crucifixion Chapel, if not marked by the superlative dramatic power of
Tabachetti, is still solemn, dignified, and impressive. The frescoes by
Morazzone in Tabachetti’s great chapel belong to the decline of art, but
there is still much in them that is excellent. So there is in some of
those by Tanzio and Melchiorre, Giovanni d’Enrico’s brothers. Giovanni
d’Enrico’s Nailing of Christ to the Cross, with its sixty figures all
rather larger than life, challenges a comparison with Tabachetti’s, which
it will not bear; still it is a great work. So are several of his other
chapels. I am not so thoroughly in sympathy with the work of any of the
three brothers d’Enrico as I should like to be, but they cannot be
ignored or spoken of without respect. There are excellent figures in
some of the chapels by less well-known men; and lastly, there is the
Vecchietto, perhaps the finest figure of all, who looks as if he had
dropped straight from the heavens towards which he is steadfastly
regarding, and of whom nothing is known except that, if not by
Tabachetti, he must be by a genius in some respects even more commanding,
who has left us nothing save this Melchizedek of a figure, without
father, mother, or descent.
I have glanced at some of the wealth in store for those who will explore
it, but at the same time I cannot pretend that even the greater number of
the chapels on the Sacro Monte are above criticism; and unfortunately
some of the best do not come till the visitor, if he takes them in the
prescribed order, has already seen a good many, and is beginning to be
tired. There is not a little to be said in favour of taking them in the
reverse order. As when one has sampled several figures in a chapel and
found them commonplace, one is apt to overlook a good one which may have
got in by accident of shifting in some one of the several rearrangements
made in the course of more than three centuries, so when sampling the
chapels themselves, after finding half a dozen running which are of
inferior merit, we approach the others with a bias against them.
Moreover, all of them have suffered more or less severely from decay.
Rain and snow, indeed, can hardly get right inside the chapels, or, at
any rate, not inside most of them, but they are all open to the air, and,
at a height of over two thousand feet, ages of winter damp have dimmed
the glory even of the best-preserved. In many cases the hair and beards,
with excess of realism, were made of horse hair glued on, and the glue
now shows unpleasantly; while the paint on many of the faces and dresses
has blistered or peeled, leaving the figures with a diseased and mangy
look. In other cases, they have been scraped and repainted, and this
process has probably been repeated many times over, with inevitable loss
of character; for the paint, unless very carefully removed, must soon
clog up and conceal delicate modelling in many parts of the face and
hands. The new paint has often been of a shiny, oleaginous character,
and this will go far to vulgarise even a finely modelled figure, giving
it something of the look of a Highlander outside a tobacconist’s shop. I
am glad to see that Professor Burlazzi, in repainting the Adam and Eve in
the first chapel, has used dead colour, as was done by Tabachetti in his
Journey to Calvary. As the figures have often become mangy, so the
frescoes are with few exceptions injured by damp and mould. The expense
of keeping up so many chapels must be very heavy; it is surprising,
therefore, that the general state of repair should be as good as it is.
Nevertheless, there is not a chapel which does not require some effort of
the imagination before the mind’s eye can see it as it was when left by
those who made it.
Unless the reader feels equal to this effort,—and enough remains to make
it a very possible one—he had better stick to the Royal Academy and
Grosvenor Exhibitions. It should go without saying that a work of art,
if considered at all, must be held to be as it was when first completed.
If we could see Gaudenzio Ferrari’s Crucifixion Chapel with its
marvellous frescoes as strong and fresh in colour as they were three
centuries and a half ago, and with its nearly thirty life-sized human
figures and horses in good condition—not forgetting that, whatever Sir
Henry Layard may say to the contrary, they are all by one hand; if,
again, Tabachetti’s great work was seen by us as it was seen by
Tabachetti, and Morazzone’s really fine background were not disfigured by
damp and mildew, it can hardly be doubted that even “a cultivated eye”
would find little difficulty in seeing these two chapels as among the
very finest triumphs that have been vouchsafed to human genius; and
surely, if this be so, it follows that we should rate them no lower even
now. Gaudenzio Ferrari’s Crucifixion Chapel, regarded as a single work,
conceived and executed by a single artist, who aimed with one intention
at the highest points ever attained both by painting and sculpture, and
who wielded on a very large scale, in connection with what was then held
to be the sublimest and most solemn of conceivable subjects, the fullest
range of all the resources available by either, must stand as perhaps the
most daringly ambitious attempt that has been made in the history of art.
As regards the frescoes, the success was as signal as the daring; and
even as regards the sculpture, the work cannot be said to have failed.
Gaudenzio the sculptor will not indeed compare with Gaudenzio the
painter; still less will he compare with Tabachetti either as a modeller
or composer of full-relief figures; but Tabachetti did not paint his own
background as well as make his figures, and something must always be
allowed to those who are carrying double. Moreover, Tabachetti followed,
whereas Gaudenzio led as pioneer in a realm of art never hitherto
attempted. Nevertheless, I may be allowed to say that, notwithstanding
all Gaudenzio’s greatness, I find Tabachetti the strongest and most
robust of all the great men who have left their mark on the Sacro Monte
at Varallo.
We cannot dismiss such works with cheap commonplaces about Madame
Tussaud’s—and for aught I know there may be some very good stuff at
Madame Tussaud’s—or sneer at them as though they must be all much of a
muchness, and because the Orta chapels are bad, therefore those at
Varallo must be so also. Those who confine themselves to retailing what
they take to be art-tips gathered from our leading journals of culture,
will probably continue to trade on this not very hardly earned capital,
whatever may be urged upon the other side; but those who will take the
trouble involved in forming an independent judgment may be encouraged to
make investment of their effort here by remembering that Gaudenzio
Ferrari ranks as among the few purest and most accomplished artists of
the very culminating period of Italian art, and that what he thought good
enough to do may be well worth our while to consider with the best
attention we can give to it.
Another point should not be forgotten by those who would form their
opinion intelligently. I mean, that they are approaching a class of work
with which they are unfamiliar, and must not, therefore, expect to be
able to make up their minds about it as they might if the question were
one either of painting or sculpture only. Sculpture and painting are
here integral parts of a single design, and it is some little time before
we grasp this conception so fully to be able to balance duly the merits
and demerits of different compositions, even though we eventually get to
see that there is an immeasurable distance between the best and worst. I
now know, for example, that Tabachetti’s Journey to Calvary is greatly
finer than Giovanni d’Enrico’s Nailing to the Cross. I see this so
clearly that I find it difficult to conceive how I can have doubted about
it. At the same time, I can remember thinking that one was nearly as
good as the other, and this long after I should have found little
difficulty in making up my mind about less complex works.
CHAPTER VII.
_AIM AND SCOPE OF THE SACRO MONTE_.
THE difficulty referred to at the close of the last chapter is the same
as that which those who rarely go to a theatre have to get over before
they can appreciate an actor. They go to “Macbeth” or “Othello,”
expecting to find players speaking and acting on the stage much as they
would in actual life; and not finding this, are apt to think the acting
coarse and unnatural. They forget that the physical conditions of the
stage involve compliance with conventions from which there is no escape,
and expect the players to play a game which the players themselves know
to be impossible, and are not even trying to play. So important is it to
understand the standpoint from which the artists at Varallo worked, that
I shall venture some further remarks upon their aim and scope before
going on to the works themselves.
Their object, or the object of those who commissioned them, was to bring
the scene with which they were engaged home to the spectator in all its
fulness, short of actual life and motion; but in this “short of actual
life and motion” what a cutting-out of the part of Hamlet is there not
involved. We can spare a good deal of Hamlet; but if the part is totally
excised,—even though the Hamlet be Mr. Irving himself,—the play must
suffer. To try to represent action without the immediate changes of
position and expression which are its most essential features, seems like
courting defeat, and to a certain extent defeat does invariably follow
the attempt to treat very violent rapid action except loosely and
sketchily. Violent action carried to high degree of finish is hardly
ever successful in painting or sculpture; a crowd done in Michael
Angelo’s Medici chapel manner must inevitably fail, and if a crowd is to
be treated in sculpture at all, Tabachetti’s broad, large-brushed, and
somewhat sketchy treatment is the one most to be preferred. In spite,
however, of the incomparable success of Tabachetti’s work, I am tempted
to question whether quiet and reposeful sculpture is not always most
permanently pleasing, as not involving so peremptory a demand for the
change that cannot, of course, ensue. At any rate, as one lie generally
leads to others, so with the attempt to render action without action’s
most essential characteristic, there is a departure from realism which
involves a host of other departures if the error is to be distributed so
as to avoid offence. In other words, convention, or a composition
between artist and spectator, whereby, in view of admitted bankruptcy and
failure of possible payment in full, a less thing shall be taken as a
greater, has superseded nature at a very early point in the proceedings.
Nevertheless, within the limits of the composition we expect to be paid
in full; whatever the dividend is we are to have all of it, and we
sometimes take a different view of the terms of the settlement to that
taken by those with whom we are dealing. It being admitted that the
object of the Sacro Monte workmen was to bring a scene home to the
spectator in all possible fulness, we expect to have a quotum of our own
ideas of the scene, whatever they may be, put before us, and are more or
less offended when we find a composition which we consider to be unreal
even within its own covenanted limitations. The fault, however, rests
greatly with ourselves, in forgetting that it must be the ideal of
medieval Italians and not our own that we should look for, and that their
ideas concerning the chief actors in the sacred dramas were not as ours
are. For us, the οἵοι νὺν βρότοι εἴσι view of history has been gathered
to its fathers, and οἵοι δὴ βρότοι ἤσαν is reigning in its stead. We
believe that we have advanced upon, not degenerated from our ancestors,
except here and there as by way of back eddy, but Italians in the Middle
Ages may be excused for having been overawed by the remains of the old
splendour which met them everywhere; and even if this had not been so, to
children and half-educated people that which happened long ago is always
grander and larger than any like thing that happened recently. As
regards the sacred dramas this grandioseness of conception extended even
to the villains of the piece, who must be greater, more muscular,
thorough-going, unredeemed villains than any now existing. The realism
which would have proved so touching and grateful now—for we should have
found it turned into idealism through the impress of that seal which it
is time’s glory to set upon aged things—would in the Middle Ages have
seemed as unworthy, and as much below the dignity of the subject as
modern treatment of the same subjects, with modern costumes, would seem
to ourselves.
Ages thwart and play at cross purposes with one another, as parents do
with children; and our forefathers have been at infinite trouble and
expense to give us what we do not want, and have withheld what they might
have given with very little trouble, and we should have held as
priceless. We cannot help it; it always has been and always will be so.
_Omne ignotum pro magnifico_ is a condition of existence or at any rate
of progress, and the unknown of the past takes a splendour reflected from
that of the future. The artists and public of the sixteenth century
could no more find what they deemed a worthy ideal in their own familiar,
and as it seemed to them prosaic age than we in ours, and every age must
make its art work to its own liking and not to that of other people.
Caimi was thinking mainly of his own generation; he could not wait a
couple of hundred years or so till the work should become touching and
quaint through age; he wanted it to be effective then and there, which if
the Apostles were shown as mere common peasants and fishermen of the then
present day, it would not and could not be—not at any rate with the pit,
and it was to the pit as well as to the boxes that these pieces were
being played. Let the ablest sculptors of the present time be asked to
treat sacred subjects as was attempted at Varallo, with the condition
that they must keep closely to the costume of to-day, and they would
probably one and all of them decline the task. We know very well that,
laugh at it as we may, our costume will three hundred years hence be as
interesting as that of any other age, but that is not to the point: it
has got to be effective now, whereas our familiarity with it has bred
contempt.
In the earlier ages both of painting and sculpture these considerations,
obvious as they are, were not taken into account. The first artists
during the medieval revival of art rose as little to theory as children
do. They found the mere doing at all so difficult that they were at the
mercy in great measure of what they could get. The real was as much as,
and more than, they could manage, and they would have idealised long
before they did, if they had not felt the task too much for them. They
could, with infinite trouble, they hardly knew how, save themselves yet
so as by fire and get a head or figure of some sort that was not quite
unlike what it was meant for, but they could only do this by helping
their unpractised memories to the facts morsel by morsel, treating nature
as though she were a stuffed set piece, getting her to sit as still for
as long a time as she could be persuaded to do, and then going all over
her touch for touch with a brush like the point of a pin. If the early
masters had been able to do all they would have liked to have done, no
doubt they would most of them have been as vulgar as we are; fortunately
their incompetence stood them in good stead and saved them from becoming
the Guidos, Domenichinos, and Guercinos, that so many of their more
competent successors took so much trouble to become. Incompetence, if
amiable and painstaking, will have with it an unconscious involuntary
idealism of its own which is perhaps more charming than any that can be
attained by aiming at it deliberately; at any rate it will take the thing
portrayed apart from the everyday familiar routine of life which is the
great enemy of fancy and the ideal; but the artists of the Sacro Monte
had got far beyond the point at which incompetence could be of much use
to them, and had to find some other means whereby to steer clear of the
everyday life which to the public for whom they had to play, would have
appeared so vulgar, and to us so infinitely more delightful than much
that they have actually left us. These means they could only find in
much the same quarters as dramatic writers and players find them on the
stage, and to a certain extent no doubt the Varallo chapels, like all
other attempts to place a scene upon a stage, must submit to the charge
of being more or less stagey, but—more especially considering that they
are seen by daylight,—it is surprising how little stagey they are.
Also, like all other attempts to place a scene upon the stage, they will
be found to consist of a few stars, several players of secondary
importance, and a certain number of supers. It is a mistake to attempt,
as I am told is attempted at the _Comédie Française_, to have all the
actors of first-class merit. They kill one another even in a picture,
and on the whole in any work of art it is better to concentrate the main
interest on a sufficient number of the most important figures, and to let
the setting off of these be the chief business of the remainder.
Gaudenzio Ferrari hardly understood this at all, and has no figures which
can be considered as mere stage accessories. Tabachetti understood it,
but could hardly bring himself down to the level of his supers. D’Enrico
understood it perhaps a shade too well; he was a man of business as well
as of very considerable genius, and turned his supers over to Giacomo
Ferro, who might be trusted to keep them sufficiently commonplace to show
his own work to advantage. It must be owned, however, that the greater
number of D’Enrico’s chapels would be better if there had been a little
more D’Enrico in them and less Giacomo Ferro, and if the D’Enrico had
been always taking pains.
We, of course, should have preferred the figures in the Varallo chapels
to be all of them as realistic as the artist could make them, provided he
chose good types, as a good man may be very well trusted to do. Whenever
we get a bit of realism as in the Eve, and Sleeping St. Joseph of
Tabachetti, in the Herod, laughing boys, and Caiaphas of D’Enrico, and
still more in the Vecchietto, or in the three or four of the figures in
the St. Eusebius Chapel at Crea, we accept it with avidity, and we may be
sure that the masters who gave us the figures above-named could have
given us any number equally realistic if they had been inclined to do so.
Tabachetti’s instinct was certainly towards realism as far as he dared,
but even he is not in most cases realistic—not, I mean, in the sense of
making his personages actual life-like portraits. That he was not more
so than he is is probably due to some of the considerations on which I
have above imperfectly dwelt, and to others that have escaped myself, but
were patent enough to him.
One other practical consideration would make against realism in such
works as those at Varallo, I mean the fact that if the figures were to be
portraits of the Varallo celebrities of the time, the whole place would
have been set by the ears in the competition as to who was to be
represented and with what precedence. It was only by passing a kind of
self-denying ordinance and forbidding portraiture at all that the work
could be carried out. Here and there, as in the case of Tabachetti’s
portrait of the Countess Solomoni of Serravalle in his Journey to
Calvary, or as in that of the Vecchietto (in each case a supposed
benefactress and benefactor) an exception was made; in most others it
seems to have been understood that whatever else the figures were to be,
they must not be portraits.
CHAPTER VIII.
_GAUDENZIO FERRARI_, _TABACHETTI_, _AND GIOVANNI D’ENRICO_.
BEFORE going through the various chapels _seriatim_, it may be well to
give a short account of three out of the four most interesting figures
among the numerous artists who worked on the Sacro Monte. By these I
mean, of course, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Tabachetti, Giovanni d’Enrico, and
the sculptor, whoever he may have been, of the Massacre of the Innocents
chapel. I take my account of Gaudenzio chiefly from Colombo’s admirable
work, and from the not less excellent notice by Signor Tonetti, that
appeared in the “Museo Storico ed Artistico Valsesiano” for July and
August 1885.
Gaudenzio Ferrari was born, according to the general belief, in 1484, but
Colombo shows reasons for thinking that this date is some four or five
years too late. His father was named Antonio Lanfranco or Franchino.
{90} He too was a painter, but nothing is known of him or his works
beyond the fact that he lived at Valduggia, where his son Gaudenzio was
born, married a woman whose surname was Vinzio, and was dead by 1510.
Gaudenzio in his early years several times signed his pictures with his
mother’s name, calling himself Vincius, De Vincio, or De Vince.
He is generally said to have studied first under Gerolamo Giovenone of
Vercelli, but this painter was not born till 1491, and we have the
authority of Lomazzo for saying that Gaudenzio’s chief instructor was
Stefano Scotto, a painter of Milan, who kept a school that was more or
less a rival to that of Leonardo da Vinci. I have myself no doubt that
Gaudenzio Ferrari has given Scotto’s portrait in at least three of the
works he has left behind him at Varallo, but will return to this subject
when I come to deal with the various places in which these portraits
appear. His first works of importance, or at least the earliest that
remain to us, are probably in or in the immediate vicinity of Varallo;
but little is known of his early years and work, beyond what is comprised
in the three pages that form the second chapter of Colombo’s book. There
is an early _ancona_ at La Rocca, near Varallo, another in the
_parocchia_ of Gattinara, and possibly a greatly damaged Pietà in the
cloisters of Sta. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo may be, as it is said to
be, an early work by Gaudenzio. Besides these, the wreck of the frescoes
on the Pietà chapel on the Sacro Monte, and other works on the same site,
now lost, belong to his earlier years.
Some believe that about the year 1506 he travelled to Perugia, Florence,
and Rome, where he made the acquaintance of Raphael, and perhaps studied
under Perugino, but Colombo has shown on what very slender, if any,
grounds this belief is based, and evidently inclines to the belief that
Gaudenzio never went to Rome, nor indeed, probably, outside Lombardy at
all. The only one of Gaudenzio’s works in which I can myself see
anything that may perhaps be called a trace of Umbrian influence, is in
the fresco of Christ disputing with the Doctors, in the chapel of Sta.
Margherita, in the Church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo. This
fresco, as Signor Arienta has pointed out to me, contains a strong
reminiscence of the architectural background in Raphael’s school of
Athens; it was painted—so far as an illegible hieroglyphic signature can
be taken as read, and so far as internal evidence of style may be relied
upon, somewhere about the year. If Gaudenzio was for the moment
influenced by Raphael, he soon shook off the influence and formed a style
of his own, from which he did not depart, except as enriching and
enlarging his manner with advancing experience. Moreover, Colombo (p.
75) points out that the works by Raphael to which Gaudenzio’s Disputa is
supposed to present an analogy, were not finished till 1511, and are
hence probably later than Gaudenzio’s fresco. Perhaps both painters drew
from some common source.
In 1508 he was at Vercelli, and on the 26th of July signed a contract to
paint a picture for the church of S. Anna. He is described in the deed
as “Gaudentius de Varali.” He had by this time married his first wife,
by whom he had two children, Gerolamo and Margherita, born in 1508 and
1512. In 1510 he undertook to paint an altarpiece for the main church at
Arona, and completed it in 1511, signing the work “_Magister Gaudentius
de Vince_, _filius quondam magistri Lanfranchi habitator vallis
Siccidæ_.” In 1513 he painted the magnificent series of frescoes in the
church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo, signing the work and dating
it, this time more legibly than he had done his earlier work in the
chapel of St. Margaret. In July 1514 he signed a contract to paint an
altarpiece for the Basilica of S. Gaudenzio at Novara. It was to be
completed within eighteen months from the date of the contract and
doubtless was so, but Gaudenzio found a good deal of difficulty in
getting his money, which was not paid in full till 1521. He is
occasionally met with at Novara and Vercelli between the years 1515 and
1524, but his main place of abode was Varallo.
No date can be positively assigned for his great Crucifixion chapel on
the Sacro Monte, but it belongs probably to the years 1524–1528. I have
already said that I can find no dates scrawled on the walls earlier than
1529. Such dates may be found yet, but if they are not found, it may be
assumed that the chapel was not thrown open to the public much before
that year. There is still a little relievo employed in the fresco
background, but not nearly so much as in the church of Sta. Maria delle
Grazie, and the increase of freedom is so evident that it is difficult
not to suppose an interval of a good many years between the two works. I
gather that by the year 1520 Gaudenzio had abandoned the use of gold and
of _relievo_ in painting, but he may have made an exception in the case
of a work which was to consist both of sculpture and painting; and there
is indeed a good deal to be said in favour of relievo in such a case, as
helping to unite the sculptured and painted portions of the work. Even
in the Magi chapel, the frescoes of which are several years later than
those in the Crucifixion chapel, there are still a few bosses of relievo
in the horses’ trappings. The date usually assigned to the Crucifixion
chapel is 1524, and, in default of more precise knowledge, we shall do
well to adhere to the date 1524–1528 already suggested.
About 1524 Gaudenzio painted a picture for the Sacristy of the Cathedral
of Novara, and Signor Tonetti says that the very beautiful picture behind
the high altar in the church of S. Gaudenzio at Varallo is generally
assigned to about the same period. He goes on to say that in 1526
Gaudenzio was certainly working at his native village of Valduggia,
where, in 1524 or 1525, a chapel had been erected in honour of S. Rocco,
who it was supposed had kept the Valsesia free from the plague that had
devastated other parts of Italy. This chapel Gaudenzio decorated with
frescoes that have now disappeared, but whose former existence is
recorded in an inscription placed in 1793, when the chapel was restored.
The inscription runs: “_Quod populus à peste denfensori erigebat an_
MDXXVI _Gaudentius Ferrarius patritius ex voto picturâ decorabat_,” &c.
In 1528 he transferred his abode to Vercelli, and about the same year
married again. His second wife was a widow who had a boy of ten years
old by Giovanni Antonio del Olmo, of Bergamo. Her name was Maria Mattia
della Foppa; she came from Morbegno in the Valtellina, and was of the
same family as Vincenzo Foppa, the reputed founder of the Milanese school
of painting. In 1532 he married his daughter Margherita to Domenico
Pertegalle, surnamed Festa, of Crevola near Varallo—he and his son
Gerolamo undertaking to give her a dowry of 500 _lire imperiale_, payable
in four years, and secured by mortgage on Gaudenzio’s house in Varallo.
In 1536 he painted the cupola of the church of the Madonna dei Miracoli
at Saronno; he then returned to Vercelli, but his abode and movements are
somewhat obscure till 1539, when it is certain that he left Varallo for
ever, settled in Milan, and died there between the years 1546 and 1549.
He does not appear to have continued to reside in Vercelli after 1536; we
may perhaps, therefore, think that he returned for a time to Varallo, and
that the frescoes on the Magi chapel should be given to some date between
1536 and 1539. They are certainly several years later than those in the
Crucifixion chapel; but I will return to these frescoes when I come to
the Magi chapel itself.
In 1539 he lost his son Gerolamo, and Colombo ascribes his departure from
Varallo to grief; but we cannot forget that in the year 1538 there broke
out a violent quarrel between the ecclesiastics of the Sacro Monte and
the lay governors of Varallo. Fassola says that in 1530 Gio. Ant.
Scarrognini, grandson of Milano Scarrognini, and some time afterwards
Gio. Angiolo Draghetti, were made Fabbricieri. The election of this last
was opposed by the ecclesiastics, who wished to see certain persons
elected who were already proctors of the convent, but the Vicini held
out, and carried the day. Party feeling ran so high, and the Fathers
wished to have such absolute control over the keys of the various money
boxes attached to the chapels, and over all other matters, that it may
well have been difficult for Gaudenzio to avoid coming into collision
with one or both of these contending parties; matters came to a head in
the year 1538, and his leaving Varallo for ever about this time may,
perhaps, be referred to his finding himself in an intolerable position,
as well as to the death of his son; but, however this may be, he sold his
house on the 5th of August, 1539, for seven hundred _lire imperiali_, and
for the rest of his life resided in Milan, where he executed several
important works, for which I must refer my readers to the pages of
Colombo.
The foregoing meagre notice is all that my space allows me to give
concerning the life of this great master. I will conclude it with a
quotation from Signor Morelli which I take from Sir Henry Layard’s recent
edition of Kugler’s Handbook of Painting (vol. ii. p. 424). Signor
Morelli is quoted as saying—
“Gaudenzio Ferrari is inferior to very few of his contemporaries, and
occasionally, as in some of those groups of men and women in the
great Crucifixion at Varallo, he might challenge comparison with
Raphael himself.”
It would be a bad business for Raphael if he did. Gaudenzio Ferrari was
what Raphael is commonly believed to have been. I do not mean, that he
was the prince of painters—such expressions are always hyperbolical;
there has been no prince of painters; I mean that Gaudenzio Ferrari’s
feeling was profound, whereas Raphael’s was at best only skin deep.
Nevertheless Signor Morelli is impressed with Ferrari’s greatness, and
places him, “for all in all, as regards inventive genius, dramatic life,
and picturesqueness * * far above Luini.” Bernardino Luini must stand so
very high that no one can be placed far above him; nevertheless, it is
hard not to think that Gaudenzio Ferrari was upon the whole the stronger
man.
TABACHETTI.
Great and fascinating as Gaudenzio was, I have already said that I find
Tabachetti a still more interesting figure. He had all Gaudenzio’s love
of beauty, coupled with a robustness, and freedom from mannerism and
self-repetition, that are not always observable in Gaudenzio’s work. If
Gaudenzio has never received anything approaching to his due meed of
praise, Tabachetti may be almost said never to have been praised at all.
In Varallo, indeed, and its neighbourhood he is justly regarded as a
giant, but the art world generally knows not so much as his name.
Cicognara, Lübke, and Perkins know not of his existence, nor of that of
Varallo itself, nor of any Valsesian school of sculpture. I have shown
that so admirable a writer as Mr. King never even alludes to him, while
the most recent authority of any reputed eminence on Italian art thinks
that the Titan of terra-cotta was a painter and a pupil of Gaudenzio
Ferrari.
Zani, indeed, in his “_Enciclopedia Metodica_,” {100a} and Nagler in his
“_Künstler Lexicon_,” {100b} to which works my attention was directed by
Mr. Donoghue of the British Museum, both mention Tabachetti. The first
calls him “_bravissimo_,” but makes him a Novarese, and calls him
“_Scultore_, _plasticalore_, _Pittore_,” and “_Incisore di stampe à
bulino_.” The second says that Bartoli (Opp. mor. I. 2), calls him a
Flemish sculptor; that he made forty small chapels and several hermitages
at Crea in the Monferrato district; and that he also worked much at
Varallo. I have in vain tried to find the passage in Bartoli to which
Nagler refers, and should be much obliged to any one who is more
fortunate if he will give me a fuller reference. The “Opp. mor.”
referred to appears to be a translation of the “Opuscoli morali” of L. B.
Alberti, published at Venice in 1568, which is too early for Tabachetti.
I have had Bartoli’s translation before me, but could discover nothing.
Nagler’s words run:—
“Tabachetti Johann Baptist, nennt Bartoli (Opp. mor. I. 2), einen
Niederläindischen Bildhauer, ohne seine Lebenzeit zu bestimmen. In
der Kirche U.L.F. Tu Creo (_sic_) (Montferrat) stellte er in vierzig
kleinen capellen die Geschichte der heil. Jungfrau, des Heilandes
und einiger Einsidler dar. Auch in Varallo arbeitete er vieles.”
If little is known about Gaudenzio we know still less about Tabachetti.
I do not believe that more is yet ascertained than I can give in the next
few pages. His name was Jean Baptiste Tabaquet, and he came from Dinant
in Belgium. This fact has only come to my knowledge within the last few
weeks, and I have been unable to go to Dinant and see whether anything
can be there made out about him. I will thankfully receive any
information which any one is good enough to send me upon this subject.
It is not known when he came to Varallo, but by the year 1586 his great
Calvary chapel was undoubtedly finished, as also, I imagine, the Adam and
Eve, and Temptation chapels, all three of which are mentioned in the 1586
edition of Caccia. In the 1590 edition, the abbreviated word “bellissi.”
has been added to the description of the Calvary chapel, as though it
were an oversight in the earlier edition to take no note of the
remarkable excellence of the work: there can be no doubt, therefore, that
Bordiga and the other principal authorities are wrong in dating this
chapel 1606. How much earlier it may be than 1586 I cannot determine
till the missing editions of Caccia are found, but there is not enough
other work of Tabachetti’s on the Sacro Monte to let us suppose that he
had worked there for very many years.
Both Fassola and Torrotti say that he began the Visit of Mary to
Elizabeth, but went mad, leaving the work to be completed by another
artist. It was generally supposed that this was the end of him, but
there can be no doubt that, if ever he went mad at all, it was only for a
short time, as a consequence of over-fatigue, and perhaps worry, over his
gigantic work, the Journey to Calvary chapel. That he was either absent
from Varallo, or at Varallo but unable to work, between the years 1586
and 1590, is certain, for, in the first place, there is no work on the
Sacro Monte that can possibly be given to him during these years, and in
the second, if he had been available, considering the brilliant success
of his Calvary chapel, the Massacre of the Innocents, which dates from
1586–1590, would surely have been entrusted to him, instead of to
Rossetti or Bargnola—whichever of these two is the rightful sculptor.
Nevertheless it is certain that after the end of 1589, to which date the
edition of Caccia appears by its preface to belong, Tabachetti reappeared
in full force, did one chapel of extreme beauty—the first Vision of St.
Joseph—and nothing more—unless indeed the Vecchietto be assigned to this
date. We know this, inasmuch as the First Vision of St. Joseph chapel is
not mentioned at all in either the 1586 or 1590 editions of Caccia, and
was evidently not yet even contemplated, whereas the Visit of Mary to
Elizabeth, over which he is supposed to have gone mad, is given in both
as completed.
Tabachetti was summoned to Crea in 1591, and was buying land and other
property in 1600, 1602, 1604, 1605, 1606, and 1608, at Serralunga, close
to Crea, where deeds which still exist say that he resided. There are
many families named Tabachetti still living in the immediate
neighbourhood of Serralunga, who are doubtless descended from the
sculptor. After 1608 nothing more is known of him. At Varallo, over and
above his work on the Sacro Monte, there is an exceedingly beautiful
Madonna by him, in the parish church of S. Gaudenzio, and one head of a
man with a ruff—a mere fragment—which Cav. Prof. Antonini showed me in
the Museum, and assured me was by Tabachetti. I know of no other work by
him except what remains at Crea, about which I will presently write more
fully. I am not, however, without hope that search about Liege and
Dinant may lead to the discovery of some work at present overlooked, and,
as I have said, will thankfully receive information.
I will conclude with a note taken from p. 47 of Part I. of Cav.
Alessandro Godio’s admirable “Cronaca di Crea.” {104}
The note runs:—
“The present writer found himself involved in a long dispute, through
having entered the lists against the Valsesian writers, who reckon
Tabachetti among the distinguished sons of the Val Sesia, and for
having said that he was born in Flanders. After a more successful
search in the above-named [Vercelli?] archive, under the letter B No.
6, over and above the deeds of 1600 and 1606, already referred to in
the ‘Vesillo della libertà,’ No. 39, Sept. 5, 1863, I found, under
numbers 308, 417, 498, 622, of the unarranged papers of Notary
Teodoro Caligaris, four more deeds dated 1602, 1604, 1605, 1608, in
which the Sculptor Gio. Battista Tabachetti is not only described as
a Fleming, but his birthplace is given as follows: “_Vendidit_,
_tradidit nobili Joanni Tabacheta filio quondam nobili Gulielmi de
Dinante de Liesa_ [_Liège_] _nunc incola Serralungæ_.” Since, then,
he was buying considerable property at Serralunga during the
above-named year, it is plain that he did not work continuously at
Varallo from 1590 to 1606, as contended by the Valsesian writers
quoted by An. Cav. Carlo Dionisotti, the distinguished author of the
Valle Sesia. Moreover, from the year 1590 and onward the chapels of
Crea were begun, and of these, by advice of Monsignor Tullio del
Carretto, Bishop of Casale, at the bidding of Michel Angelo da
Liverno, who was Vicar of Crea, Tabachetti designed not fifteen but
forty, and found himself at the head of the direction of the great
work that was then engaging the attention of the foremost Italian
artists of the day.”
GIOVANNI D’ENRICO.
For my account of Giovanni D’Enrico I turn to Signor Galloni’s “_Uomini e
fatti celebri di Valle Sesia_.” He was second of three brothers,
Melchiorre, Giovanni, and Antonio, commonly called Tanzio, who were born
at the German-speaking village of Alagna, that stands at the head of the
Val Sesia. Signor Galloni says that the elder brother, Melchiorre,
painted the frescoes in the Temptation chapel in 1594, and the Last
Judgment on the facciata of the parish church at Riva in 1597.
The house occupied by the family of D’Enrico was, as I gather from a note
communicated to Signor Galloni by Cav. Don Farinetti of Alagna, in the
fraction of Alagna called Giacomolo, where a few years ago a last
descendant of the family was still residing. The house is of wood, old
and black with smoke; on the wooden gallery or lobby that runs in front
of it, and above the low and narrow doorways, there is an inscription or
verse of the Bible, “_Allein Gott Ehere_,” dated 1609. The small oratory
hard by is said to have been also the property of the D’Enrico family,
and in the _ancona_ of the little altar there is a picture representing
the Virgin of not inconsiderable merit, with a beautiful gilded frame in
excellent preservation. On the background of this picture there is the
stemma of the D’Enrico family, and an inscription in Latin bearing the
names of John and Eva D’Enrico.
The exact dates of the births of the three brothers are unknown, but the
eldest and youngest were described in a certificate of good character,
dated February 11, 1600, as “_juvenes bonæ vocis_, _conditionis et
famæ_,” so that if we assume Melchiorre to have been born in 1575, {106}
Giovanni in 1580, and Antonio in 1585, we shall, in no case, be more than
five years or so in error. I own to being able to see little merit in
any of Melchiorre’s work, of which the reader will find a sample in the
frescoes behind the old Adam and Eve, which is given to face p. 121, but
it is believed that he for the most part painted the terra-cotta figures,
rather than backgrounds. Nor do I like the work of Tanzio—which may be
seen, perhaps, to the best advantage in the Herod chapel. Tanzio,
however, was a stronger man than Melchiorre. Giovanni was incomparably
the ablest of the three brothers, and it is to him alone that I will ask
the reader to devote attention.
Signor Galloni calls Giovanni D’Enrico a pupil of Tabachetti, probably
following Bordiga, but I have not seen the evidence on which this
generally received opinion is based; Tabachetti had finally left Varallo
by 1591, when Giovanni D’Enrico was little more than a child, and though
he may have been sent to work under Tabachetti at Crea, I have not come
across anything to show this was so. He was an architect as well as
sculptor, and is believed to have made the modification of Pellegrino
Tibaldi’s designs that was ultimately adopted for the Palazzo di Pilato,
Caiaphas, and Herod chapels. He was also architect of the Chiesa
Maggiore on the Sacro Monte, his design having been approved April 1,
1614. He is believed to have done a Madonna and child, a St. Rocco, and
a St. Sebastian in the parish church at Alagna; he also sent many figures
away, some of which may possibly be found in the disused chapels of
Graglia, if indeed these contain anything at all. He died at Montrigone
near Borgosesia in 1644, while superintending the work of his pupil and
collaborateur Giacomo Ferro, who, it is said, has placed his master’s
portrait near the bed of S. Anna in his chapel of the Birth of the Virgin
(?) at Montrigone. Others say that the figure in question does not
represent D’Enrico, and that his portrait is found in a niche in the
chapel itself, but Signor Galloni assures us that there is nothing but
tradition in favour of either view. Giacomo Ferro appears to have been
his only pupil and his only collaborateur. There can, I think, be little
doubt that the greater part of the work generally ascribed to D’Enrico is
really by Giacomo Ferro, and the uncertainty as to what figures are
actually by D’Enrico himself makes it very difficult to form a just
opinion about his genius. Some chapels are given to him, as for example
the Flagellation and Crowning with Thorns, which are mentioned as
completed in the 1586 edition of Caccia, when D’Enrico was at most a
child. True, he may have remodelled these chapels, but I have not yet
met with evidence that he actually did so, though I dare say such
evidence may exist without my knowing it.
In those in which he was undoubtedly assisted by Giacomo Ferro, as for
example the Caiaphas, Herod, four Pilate, and Nailing to the Cross
chapels, with possibly the Ecce Homo, perhaps the safest rule will be to
give the few really excellent figures that are to be found in each of
them to D’Enrico himself and to ascribe all the inferior work, of which
unfortunately there is too much, to Giacomo Ferro. That the assistance
rendered by him was on a very large scale may be gathered from the fact
that there was a deed drawn up between him and his master whereby he was
to receive half the money that was paid to D’Enrico,—a quasi partnership
indeed seems to have existed between the two sculptors. This deed is
referred to by Signor Galloni on page 178 of his “Uomini e Fatti,” and on
the same page he gives us an extract from a lawsuit between Giacomo Ferro
and the town of Varallo which gives us a curious insight into the manner
in which the artists of the Sacro Monte were paid. From a
_procès-verbal_ in connection with this suit Signor Galloni quotes the
following extract:—
“And further the said deputies allege that in the accounts rendered
by the said master Giovanni D’Enrico in respect of the pontifical
thrones in the Caiaphas and Nailing to the Cross chapels, these have
been valued at the rate of four statues for each several throne and
horse, whereas it appears from old accounts rendered by other
statuaries that they have been hitherto charged only at the rate of
three statues for each throne and horse. Wherefore the said deputies
claim to deduct the overcharge of one statue for each horse and
throne, which being thirteen at the rate of 10 and a quarter scudi
for each figure, would give a total deduction of 132 and a half
scudi.”
It appears in another part of the same _procès-verbal_ that Giovanni
D’Enrico had been paid in 1640 the sum of 4240 lire and 8 soldi.
Giacomo Ferro and his brother Antonio were Giovanni D’Enrico’s heirs,
from which it would appear that he either died unmarried, or left no
children.
To say that D’Enrico will compare with Tabachetti would be an obvious
exaggeration, and, indeed, there are only very few figures on the Sacro
Monte about which we can feel certain that they are by him at all. The
Caiaphas, Herod, Laughing Boys in the Herod chapel, and the Man with the
Two Children in the Ecce Homo chapel cannot, I think, be given to any one
else, but at this moment I do not call to mind more than some fourteen or
fifteen figures out of the three hundred or so that are ascribed to him,
about which we can be as certain that they are by D’Enrico as we can be
that most of those given to Tabachetti and Gaudenzio are actually by
them. For not only have we to reckon with Giacomo Ferro, who, if he had
half the pay, we may be sure did not less than half the figures, and
probably very much more, but we must reckon with the figures taken from
older chapels when reconstructed, as in D’Enrico’s time was the case with
several. What became of the figures in Gaudenzio Ferrari’s original
Journey to Calvary chapel, and in other works by him that were cancelled
when the Palazzo di Pilato chapel was built? It is not likely they were
destroyed if by any hook or crook they could be made to do duty in some
other shape; more probably they are most of them still existing up and
down D’Enrico’s various chapels, but so doctored, if the expression may
be pardoned, that Gaudenzio himself would not know them. In the Ecce
Homo chapel we can say with confidence that the extreme figure to the
left is by Gaudenzio, and has been taken from some one of his chapels now
lost; we are able to detect this by an accident, but there are other
figures in the same chapel and not a few elsewhere, about which we can
have no confidence that they have not been taken from some earlier chapel
either by Gaudenzio or some one else. What, then, with these figures,
and what with Giacomo Ferro, it is not easy to say what D’Enrico did or
did not do.
The intercalated figures have been fitted into the work with admirable
skill, nevertheless they do not form part of design, and make it want the
unity observable in the work of Tabachetti and Gaudenzio. They have been
lugged into the composition, and no matter how skilful their
introduction, are soon felt, as in the case of the Vecchietto, to have no
business where they are. Moreover, D’Enrico shows his figures off, which
Tabachetti never does: the result is that in his chapels each figure has
its attention a good deal drawn to the desirableness of neither being
itself lost sight of, nor impeding the view of its neighbours. This is
fatal, and though Giacomo Ferro is doubtless more practically guilty in
the matter than D’Enrico, yet D’Enrico is the responsible author of the
work, and must bear the blame accordingly. Standing once with Signor
Pizetta of Varallo, before D’Enrico’s great Nailing of Christ to the
Cross chapel, I asked him casually how he thought it compared with
Tabachetti’s Journey to Calvary. He replied “_Questo non sacrifica
niente_,” meaning that Tabachetti thought of the action much and but
little of whether or no the actors got in each other’s way, whereas
D’Enrico was mainly bent on making his figures steer clear of one
another. Thus his chapels want the concert and unity of action that give
such life to Tabachetti’s. Nevertheless, in spite of the defect above
referred to, it is impossible to deny that the sculptor of the Herod and
Caiaphas figures was a man of very rare ability, nor can the general
verdict which assigns him the third place among the workers on the Sacro
Monte be reasonably disputed. But this third place must be given rather
in respect of quantity than quality, for in dramatic power and
highly-wrought tragic action he is inferior to the sculptor, whoever he
may be, of the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, to which I will return
when I come to the chapel in question.
I may say in passing that Cicognara, Lübke, and Perkins have all omitted
to mention Giovanni D’Enrico as a sculptor, though Nagler mentions his
two brothers as painters. Nagler gives the two brothers D’Enrico as all
bearing the patronymic Tanzio, which I am told is in reality only a
corruption of the Christian name of the third brother. Zani mentions
Giovanni D’Enrico as well as his two brothers, and calls him “_celebre_,”
but he calls all the three brothers “Tanzii, Tanzi, Tanzio, or Tanzo.”
CHAPTER IX.
_THE ASCENT_, _AND THE FIRST FOUR CHAPELS_.
THE ascent to the Sacro Monte begins immediately after the church of Sta.
Maria delle Grazie has been passed, and is made by a large broad road
paved with rounded stones, and beautifully shaded by the chestnuts that
grow on the steep side of the mountain. The old road up the mountain was
below the present, and remains of it may yet be seen. Ere long a steeper
narrower road branches off to the right hand, which makes rather a
shorter cut, and is commonly called the “_Strada della Madonna_.” From
this name it has become generally believed that the Madonna once actually
came to Varallo to see the Sacro Monte, and took this shorter road.
There is no genuine tradition, however, to this effect, and the belief
may be traced to misapprehension of a passage in Fassola and Torrotti,
who say that the main road represents the path taken by Christ himself on
his journey to Calvary, while the other symbolises the short cut taken by
the Virgin when she went to rejoin him after his resurrection. When he
was _Assistente_, which I gather to have been much what the Director of
the Sacro Monte is now, Torrotti had some poetry put up to say this.
At the point where the two roads again meet there is a large wooden
cross, from which the faithful may help themselves to a chip. That they
do get chips is evident by the state of the cross, but the wood is hard,
and none but the very faithful will get so much but that plenty will be
left for those who may come after them. I saw a stout elderly lady
trying to get a chip last summer; she was baffled, puzzled, frowned a
good deal, and was perspiring freely. She tried here, and she tried
there, but could get no chip; and presently began to cry. Jones and I
had been watching her perplexity, as we came up the _Strada della
Madonna_, and having a stouter knife than hers offered to help her. She
was most grateful, when, not without difficulty, Jones succeeded in
whittling for her a piece about an inch long, and as thick as the wood of
a match box. “Per Bacco,” she exclaimed, still agitated, and not without
asperity, “I never saw such a cross in my life.” The old cross,
considered to be now past further whittling, was lying by the roadside
ready to be taken away. I had wanted to get the lady a chip from this,
thinking it looked as if it would lend itself more easily to the design,
but she said it would not do. They have a new cross every year, and they
always select a hard knotty uncompromising piece of wood for the purpose.
The old is then taken away and burnt for firewood.
Of this cross Fassola says it was here (“_e quì fù dove_”) the Virgin met
her son, and that for this reason a small chapel was placed rather higher
up, which represents the place where she took a little rest, and was
hence called the Capella del Riposo. It was decorated with frescoes by
Gaudenzio, which have long since disappeared; these were early works, and
among the first undertaken by him on the Sacro Monte; the chapel remains,
but may, and probably will, be passed without notice. A little higher
still, there is another very small and unimportant chapel containing a
decayed St. Jerome by Giovanni D’Enrico, and above this, facing the
visitor at the last turn of the road, is the chapel erected in memory of
Cesare Maio, or Maggi, a Neapolitan, Marquis of Moncrivelli, and one of
Charles the Fifth’s generals. He died in 1568. Many years before his
death he had commanded an armed force against the Valsesians, but when
his horse, on approaching Varallo, caught sight of the Sacro Monte, it
genuflected three times and pawed a great cross on the road with its
feet. This had such an effect upon the rider that he had thenceforward
to become a munificent benefactor of the Sacro Monte, and expressly
desired to be buried there. I do not know where the horse was buried.
His chapel contains nothing of importance, nor yet does the small oratory
with a crucifix in memory of a benefactor, one Giovanni Pschel Alemanno;
this is at the top of the ascent and close to the smaller entrance to the
Sacro Monte.
At this smaller entrance the visitor will be inclined to enter, but he
should not do so if he wishes to take the chapels in the order in which
they are numbered. He should continue the broad road until he reaches
the excellent inn kept by Signor Topini, and the shops where “_corone_”
and pilgrims’ beads are sold. The inn and shops are mentioned by Fassola
and by Torrotti. Fassola in 1671 says of the inn that it will afford
accommodation for people of all ranks, and that though any one with other
curiosity may stay in the town, those who would enjoy their devotion
quietly and diffusively can do so more at their ease here. Of the shops
he says that they sell “_corone_, _Storie della Fabrica_,” “and other
like instruments of devotion” (“_ed altri instromenti simili di
divozione_” p. 80). Torrotti says they sell his book there, with images,
and various devout curiosities (_e varie cose curiose di divozione_, p.
66). The shutters are strong and probably the original ones.
At Varese there is a very beautiful lady, one among many others hardly if
at all less beautiful on the same mountain, of whom I once asked what
people did with these _Corone_. She said, “_Le adoperano per pregare_,”
“They make use of them to pray with.” She then asked whether the English
ever prayed. I said of course they did; that all nations, even the
Turks, prayed. “_È Turco lei_?” she said, with a singularly sweet, kind,
and beneficent expression. I said I was not, but I do not think she
believed me.
Passing now under the handsome arch which forms the main entrance to the
sacred precincts we come to
CHAPEL NO. 1. ADAM AND EVE.
This chapel is perhaps the only one in the case of which Pellegrino
Tibaldi’s design was carried out; and even here it has been in many
respects modified. The figures are by Tabachetti; and the original
internal frescoes were by Domenico Alfani Perugino, but they have
perished and have lately been replaced by some pieces from the life of
Adam and Eve by Professor Burlazzi of Varallo. The outer frescoes are
said by Bordiga to be by Giovanni Miel of Antwerp, but they are probably
in reality by one of the brothers Battista and Gio. Mauro Rovere. I
will, however, reserve remarks on this subject until I come to the
Massacre of the Innocents chapel. The original frescoes do not appear to
have been executed till 1594–1600, but the terra-cotta work is described
as complete in the 1586 edition of Caccia in terms that leave no doubt
but that the present group is intended; it is probably among the first
works executed by Tabachetti on the Sacro Monte, but how much earlier it
is than 1586 cannot be known till the missing editions of Caccia are
found. That he did the Adam and Eve is not doubted. If he also did the
animals, he had made great progress by the time he came to the Temptation
chapel, for the animals in this last chapel are far finer than those in
the Adam and Eve chapel.
The present chapel superseded an earlier one with the same subject, which
was probably on the site now occupied by the Crowning with Thorns,
inasmuch as in this chapel the fresco on one wall still represents Adam
and Eve being dismissed from Paradise. Signor Arienta pointed this out
to me, and I think it sufficiently determines the position of the
original Adam and Eve chapel. The evidence for the existence of the
earlier chapel throws so much light upon the way in which figures have
been shifted about and whole chapels have disappeared, leaving only an
incidental trace or two behind them in some other of those now existing,
that I shall not hesitate to reproduce it here.
We were told in the town that there had been an old Adam and an old Eve,
and that these two figures were now doing duty as Roman soldiers in
chapel No. 23, which represents the Capture of Christ. On investigation,
we found, against the wall, two figures dressed as Roman soldiers that
evidently had something wrong with them. The draperies of all the other
figures are painted, either terra-cotta or wood, but with these two they
are real, being painted linen or calico, dipped in thin mortar or plaster
of Paris, and real drapery always means that the figure has had something
done to it. The armour, where armour shows, is not quite of the same
pattern as that painted on the other figures, nor is it of the same make;
in the case of the remoter figure it does not go down far enough, and
leaves a lucid interval of what was evidently once bare stomach, but has
now been painted the brightest blue that could be found, so that it does
not catch the eye as flesh; a little further examination was enough to
make us strongly suspect that the figures had both been originally nude,
and in this case the story current in Varallo was probably true.
[Picture: Plate No. II. The Old Adam and Eve]
Then the question arose, which was Adam, and which Eve? The farther
figure was the larger and therefore ought to have been Adam, but it had
long hair, and looked a good deal more like a woman than the other did.
The nearer figure had a beard and moustaches, and was quite unlike a
woman; true, we could see no sign of bosom with the farther figure, but
neither could we with the nearer. On the whole, therefore, we settled it
that the nearer and moustached soldier was Adam, and the more distant
long-haired beardless one, Eve. In the evening, however, Cav. Prof.
Antonini and several of the other best Varallo authorities were on the
Sacro Monte, and had the grating removed so that we could get inside the
chapel, which we were not slow to do. The state of the drapery showed
that curiosity had been already rife upon the subject, and, observing
this, Jones and I gently lifted as much of it as was necessary, and put
the matter for ever beyond future power of question that the farther,
long-haired, beardless figure was Adam, and the nearer, moustached one,
Eve. They are now looking in the same direction, as joining in the hue
and cry against Christ, but were originally turned towards one another;
the one offering, and the other taking, the apple.
Tabachetti’s Eve, in the Creation or Adam and Eve chapel, is a figure of
remarkable beauty, and a very great improvement on her predecessor. The
left arm is a restoration by Cav. Prof. Antonini, but no one who was not
told of the fact would suspect it. The heads both of the Adam and the
Eve have been less successfully repainted than the rest of the figures,
and have suffered somewhat in consequence, but the reader will note the
freedom from any approach to _barocco_ maintained throughout the work.
The serpent is exceedingly fine, and the animals are by no means
unpleasing. Speaking for myself, I have found the work continually grow
upon me during the many years I have known it.
[Picture: Plate III. Tabachetti’s Adam and Eve]
The walls of this, and, indeed, of all the chapels, were once covered
with votive pictures recording the _Grazie_ with which each several
chapel should be credited, but these generally pleasing, though perhaps
sometimes superstitious, minor satellites of the larger artistic
luminaries have long since disappeared. It is plain that either the
chapels are losing their powers of bringing the _Grazie_ about, or that
we moderns care less about saying “thank you” when we have been helped
out of a scrape than our forefathers did. Fassola says:—
“Molti oltre questa non mancano di lasciar qualche insigne memoria,
cioè ò li dinari per incominciar, ò finire qualche Capella, ò per
qualche pittura ò Statua, ò altro non essendouene pur’ vno di questi
Benefattori, che non habbino ottenute le grazie desiderate di Dio, e
dalla Beata Vergine, del che piene ne sono le carte, le mura delle
Capelle, e Chiese con voti d’argento, ed altre infinite Tauolette,
antichissime, e moderne, voti di cera ed altro, oltre tanto da
esprimersi grazie, che ò per pouertà, ò per mancanza, ò per altri
pensieri de’ graziati restano celate.”
For my own part I am sorry that these humble chronicles of three
centuries or so of hairbreadth escapes are gone. Votive pictures have
always fascinated me. Everything does go so dreadfully wrong in them,
and yet we know it will all be set so perfectly right again directly, and
that nobody will be really hurt. Besides, they are so naïve, and free
from “high-falutin;” they give themselves no airs, are not review-puffed,
and the people who paint them do not call one another geniuses. They are
business-like, direct, and sensible; not unfrequently they acquire
considerable historical interest, and every now and then there is one by
an old master born out of due time—who probably wist not so much as even
that there were old masters. Here, if anywhere, may be found
smouldering, but still living, embers of the old art-fire of Italy, and
from these, more readily than from the hot-bed atmosphere of the
academies, may the flame be yet rekindled. Lastly, if allowed to come as
they like, and put themselves where they will, they grow into a pretty,
quilt-like, artlessly-arranged decoration, that will beat any mere
pattern contrived of set purpose. Some half-dozen or so of the old
votive pictures are still preserved in the Museum at Varallo, and are
worthy of notice, one or two of them dating from the fifteenth century,
and a few late autumn leaves, as it were, of images in wax still hang
outside the Crowning with Thorns chapel, but the chapels are, for the
most part, now without them. Each chapel was supposed to be beneficial
in the case of some particular bodily or mental affliction, and Fassola
often winds up his notice with a list of the Graces which are most
especially to be hoped for from devotion at the chapel he is describing;
he does not, however, ascribe any especial and particular Grace to the
first few chapels. A few _centesimi_ and perhaps a _soldo_ or two still
lie on the floor, thrown through the grating by pilgrims, and the number
of these which any chapel can attract may be supposed to be a fair test
of its popularity. These _centesimi_ are a source of temptation to the
small boys of Varallo, who are continually getting into trouble for
extracting them by the help of willow wands and birdlime. I understand
that when the _centesimi_ are picked up by the authorities, some few are
always left, on the same principle as that on which we leave a nest egg
in a hen’s nest for the hen to lay a new one to; a very little will do,
but even the boys know that there must be a germ of increment left, and
when they stole the coppers from the Ecce Homo chapel not long since,
they still left one _centesimo_ and a waistcoat button on the floor.
CHAPEL NO. 2. THE ANNUNCIATION.
This was one of the earliest chapels, and is dated by Fassola as from
1490 to 1500. There is no record of any contemporary fresco background.
Bordiga says that these figures were originally in the chapel now
occupied by the Salutation of Mary by Elizabeth, but that having been
long objects of popular veneration they were preserved at the time when
Tabachetti took this block of buildings in hand. It does not appear from
any source what figures were in this chapel before the Annunciation
figures were brought here; possibly, as it is supposed to be a
reproduction of the Santa Casa di Loreto, this was considered enough and
it was untenanted. Bordiga says, “The faces and extremities have a
divine expression and are ancient,” but both Fassola and Torrotti say
that Tabachetti gave the figures new heads. These last are probably
right; the Virgin has real drapery, which, as I have said, always means
that the figure has been cut about.
Whatever the change was, it had been effected before the publication of
the 1586 edition of Caccia, where the chapel is described, in immediate
sequence to the Adam and Eve chapel, and in the following terms:—
“Si vede poi un poco discosto, un altro Tempio, fatto ad imitatione
della Cappella di Loreto, ben adornato, dove è l’Angelo che annontia
l’ incarnatione . . . . di relievo.”
In the poetical part of the same book the figures are very warmly
praised, as, indeed, they deserve to be. Fassola and Torrotti both say
that the Virgin was a very favourite figure—so much so that pilgrims had
loaded her with jewels. One night, a thief tried to draw a valuable ring
from her finger, when she dealt him a stunning box on the ear that
stretched him senseless until he was apprehended and punished. Fassola
says of the affair:—
“Frà gl’ altri è degna di racconto la mortificazione hauuta da vn
peruerso, che fatto ardito, non sò da quale spirito diabolico,
volendo rubbare alcune di dette gioie, e forsi tutte, dalle mani
della Beata Vergine fù reso immobile da vna guanciata della Vergine
fin’ à tanto, che la giustizia l’ hebbe nella sua braccia; contempli
ogn’ vno questa Statua, che ne riporterà mosso il cuore.”
Under the circumstances I should say he had better contemplate her at a
respectful distance. I can believe that the thief was very much
mortified, but the Virgin seems to have been a good deal mortified too,
for I suspect her new head was after this occurrence and not before it.
Such miracles are still of occasional if not frequent occurrence in
connection with the Sacro Monte. I have a broadside printed at Milan in
1882 in which a full account is given of a recent miracle worked by the
Blessed Virgin of the Sacro Monte of Varallo. It is about a young man
who had been miraculously cured of a lingering illness that had baffled
the skill of all the most eminent professors; so his father sent him with
a lamp of gold and a large sum of money which he was to offer to the
Madonna. As he was on his way he felt tired [it must be remembered that
the railway was not opened till 1886], so he sat down under a tree and
began to amuse himself by counting the treasure. Hardly had he begun to
count when he was attacked by four desperate assassins, who with pistols
and poignards did their very utmost to despoil him, but it was not the
smallest use. One of the assassins was killed, and the others were so
cowed that they promised, if he would only fetch them some “devotions”
from the Sacro Monte, to abandon their evil courses and thenceforth lead
virtuous lives.
We do not pitch our tracts quite so strongly, but need give ourselves no
airs in this matter.
CHAPEL NO. 3. THE SALUTATION OF MARY BY ELIZABETH.
The walls of this chapel according to Fassola are old, but the figures
all new. Both Fassola and Torrotti say that Tabachetti had just begun to
work on this chapel when he lost his reason, but as the work is described
as complete in the 1586 edition of Caccia, it is evident, as I have
already shown, that his insanity was only temporary, inasmuch as he did
another chapel after 1590. Both writers are very brief in their
statement of the fact, Fassola only saying “_quando era diuenuto pazzo_,”
and Torrotti “_impazzitosi_.” The fresco background is meagre and forms
no integral part of the design; this does not go for much, but suggests
that in the original state of the chapel, which we know was an early one,
there may have been but little background, the fresco background not
having yet attained its full development. The figures would doubtless
look better than they do if they had not been loaded with many coats of
shiny paint, which has clogged some of the modelling; they are not very
remarkable, but improve upon examination, and it must be remembered that
the subject is one of exceeding difficulty.
CHAPEL NO. 4. FIRST VISION OF ST. JOSEPH.
Fassola and Torrotti say that this chapel was originally a servant’s
lodge (“ospizio delli serui della Fabrica”), and part of the building is
still used as a store-room. The servants were subsequently shifted to
what was then the chapel of the Capture of Christ, the figures in that
chapel being moved to the one in which they are now. The original
Capture chapel was on the ground floor of the large house that stands on
the right hand as one enters the small entrance to the Sacro Monte which
a visitor will be tempted to take, opposite Giovanni Pschel’s chapel, and
a little below the Temptation chapel.
[Picture: Plate IV. First Vision of St. Joseph]
The First Vision of St. Joseph is not mentioned in either the 1586 or
1590 editions of Caccia; we may therefore be certain that it did not
exist, and may also be sure that it was Tabachetti’s last work upon the
Sacro Monte—for that it is by him has never been disputed. It should
probably be dated early in 1591, by which time Tabachetti must have
recovered his reason and was on the point of leaving Varallo for ever. I
give a photograph of the very beautiful figure of St. Joseph, which must
rank among the finest on the Sacro Monte. I grant that a sleeping figure
is the easiest of all subjects, except a dead one, inasmuch as Nature
does not here play against the artist with loaded dice, by being able to
give the immediate change of position which the artist cannot. With
sleep and death there is no change required, so that the hardest sleeping
figure is easier than the easiest waking one; moreover, sleep is so
touching and beautiful that it is one of the most taking of all subjects;
nevertheless there are sleeping figures and sleeping figures, and the St.
Joseph in the chapel we are considering is greatly better than the second
sleeping St. Joseph in chapel No. 9, by whomsoever this figure may be—or
than the sleeping Apostles by D’Enrico in chapel No. 22.
Cusa says that the Madonna is taken from a small figure modelled by
Gaudenzio still existing at Valduggia in the possession of the Rivaroli
family. She is a very pretty and graceful figure, and is sewing on a
pillow in the middle of the composition—of course unmoved by the presence
of the angel, who is only visible to her husband. The angel is also a
remarkably fine figure.
CHAPTER X. THE SEVEN CHAPELS NUMBERED 5–11.
CHAPEL NO. 5. VISIT OF THE MAGI.
FASSOLA says that this chapel was begun about the year 1500, and
completed about 1520, at the expense of certain wealthy Milanese;
Torrotti repeats this. Bordiga gives it a later date, making Gaudenzio
begin to work in it in 1531; he supposes that Gaudenzio left Varallo
suddenly in that year to undertake work for the church of St. Cristoforo
at Vercelli without quite completing the Magi frescoes; and it is indeed
true that the frescoes appear to be unfinished, some parts at first sight
seeming only sketched in outline, as though the work had been
interrupted; but Colombo, whose industry is only equalled by his fine
instinct and good sense, refers both the frescoes and their interruption
to a later date. Still, Fassola may have only intended, and indeed
probably did intend, that the shell of the building was completed by
1520, the figures and frescoes being deferred for want of funds, though
the building was ready for occupation.
Colombo, on page 115 of his “Life and Work of Gaudenzio Ferrari,” says
that Bordiga remarked the obvious difference in style between the
frescoes in the Magi and the Crucifixion chapels, which he held to have
been completed in 1524, but nevertheless thought seven years the utmost
that passed between the two works. Colombo shows that by 1528 Gaudenzio
was already established at Vercelli, and ascribes the frescoes in the
Magi chapel to a date some time between 1536 and 1539, during which time
he believes that Gaudenzio returned to Varallo, finding no trace of him
elsewhere. The internal evidence in support of this opinion is strong,
for the Crucifixion chapel is not a greater advance upon the frescoes in
the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, painted in 1513, magnificent as
these last are, than the Magi frescoes are upon the Crucifixion, and an
interval of ten years or so is not too much to allow between the two.
Gaudenzio Ferrari was like Giovanni Bellini, a slow but steady grower
from first to last; with no two painters can we be more sure that as long
as they lived they were taking pains, and going on from good to better;
nevertheless, it takes many years before so wide a difference can be
brought about, as that between the frescoes in the Magi and Crucifixion
chapels. The Magi frescoes have, however, unfortunately suffered from
damp much more than the Crucifixion ones, and I should say they had been
a good deal retouched, but by a very capable artist.
Colombo thinks that in these frescoes Gaudenzio was assisted by his son
Gerolamo, who died in 1539, and, as I have said, holds that it was the
death of this son which made him leave Varallo, without even finishing
the frescoes on which he was engaged.
But Signor Arienta assures me that the frescoes were not in reality left
incomplete: he holds that the wall on the parts where the outline shows
was too dry when the colour was laid on, and that it has gradually gone,
leaving the outline only. This, he tells me, not unfrequently happens,
and has occurred in one or two places even in the Crucifixion chapel,
where an arm here and there appears unfinished. The parts in the Magi
chapel that show the outline only are not likely to have been left to the
last; they come in a very random haphazard way, and I have little
hesitation in accepting Signor Arienta’s opinion. If, however, this is
wrong and the work was really unfinished, I should ascribe this fact to
the violent dissensions that broke out in 1538, and should incline
towards using it as an argument for assigning this date to the frescoes
themselves, more especially as it fits in with whatever other meagre
evidence we have.
Something went wrong with the funds destined for the erection of this
chapel, and this may account for the length of time taken to erect the
chapel itself, as well as for subsequent delay in painting it and filling
it with statues. In the earlier half of his work Fassola says that
certain Milanese gentlemen, “_Signori della Castellanza_,” subscribed two
hundred gold scudi with which to found the chapel, but that the money was
in part diverted to other uses—“a matter,” he says, “about which I am
compelled to silence by a passage in my preface;” this passage is the
expression of a desire to avoid giving offence; but Fassola says the
interception of the funds involved the chapel’s “remaining incomplete for
some time.” There seems, in fact, to have been some serious scandal in
connection with the money, about which, even after 150 years, Fassola was
unwilling to speak.
I would ask the reader to note in passing that in this work, high up on
the spectator’s right, Gaudenzio has painted some rocks with a truth
which was in his time rare. In the earliest painting, rocks seem to have
been considered hopeless, and were represented by a something like a
mould for a jelly or blanc-mange; yet rocks on a grey day are steady
sitters, and one would have thought the early masters would have found
them among the first things that they could do, whereas on the contrary
they were about the last to be rendered with truth and freedom by the
greatest painters. This was probably because rocks bored them; they
thought they could do them at any time, and were more interested with the
figures, draperies, and action. Leonardo da Vinci’s rocks, for example,
are of no use to any one, nor yet for the matter of that is any part of
his landscape—what little there is of it. Holbein’s strong hand falls
nerveless before a rock or mountain side, and even Marco Basaiti, whose
landscape has hardly been surpassed by Giovanni Bellini himself, could
not treat a rock as he treated other natural objects. As for Giovanni
Bellini, I do not at this moment remember to have seen him ever attempt a
bit of slate, or hard grey gritty sandstone rock. This is not so with
Gaudenzio, his rocks in the Magi chapel, and again in the Pietà
compartment of his fresco in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, at the
foot of the mountain, are as good as rocks need ever be. The earliest
really good rocks I know are in the small entombment by Roger Van der
Weyden in our own National Gallery.
Returning to the terra-cotta figures in the Magi chapel, there is nothing
about them to find fault with, but they do not arouse the same enthusiasm
as the frescoes. They too are sufferers by damp and lapse of time, and a
painted terra-cotta figure does not lend itself to a dignified decay.
The _disjecti membra poetæ_ are hard to recognise if painted terra-cotta
is the medium through which inspiration has been communicated to the
outer world. Outside the Magi chapel, invisible by the Magi, and under a
small glazed lantern which lights the St. Joseph with the Virgin adoring
the Infant Saviour, and the Presepio, hangs the star. It is very pretty
where it is, but its absence from the chapel itself is, I think, on the
whole, regrettable. I have been sometimes tempted to think that it
originally hung on the wall by a hook which still remains near the door
through which the figures must pass, but think it more probable that this
hook was used to fasten the string of a curtain that was hung over the
window.
In conclusion, I should say that Colombo says that the figures being
short of the prescribed number were completed by Fermo Stella. Bordiga
gives the horses only to this artist.
CHAPEL NO. 6. IL PRESEPIO.
This is more a grotto than a chapel, and is declared in an inscription
set up by Bernardino Caimi in letters of gold to be “the exact
counterpart of the one at Bethlehem in which the Virgin gave birth to her
Divine Son.” Bordiga writes of this inscription as still visible, but I
have repeatedly looked for it without success.
If Caimi, as Fassola distinctly says, had the above inscription set up,
it is plain that this, and perhaps the Shepherd’s chapel hard by, were
among the very earliest chapels undertaken. This is rendered probable by
the statement of Fassola that the shell of the Circumcision chapel which
adjoins the ones we are now considering was built “_dalli principij del
Sacro Monte_.” He says that this fact is known by the testimony of
certain contemporaneous painters (“_il che s’ argumenta dalli Pittori che
furono di que’ tempi_”). Clearly, then, the Presepio, Shepherds, and
Circumcision chapels were in existence some years before the Magi chapel
was begun. Gaudenzio was too young to have done the figures before
Bernardino died. Originally, doubtless, the grotto was shown without
figures, which were added by Gaudenzio, later on; they were probably
among his first works. The place is so dark that they cannot be well
seen, but about noon the sun comes down a narrow staircase and they can
be made out very well for a quarter of an hour or so; they are then seen
to be very good. They have no fresco background, nor yet is there any to
the Shepherd’s chapel, which confirms me in thinking these to have been
among the earliest works undertaken. Colombo says that the infant Christ
in the Presepio is not by Gaudenzio, the original figure having been
stolen by some foreigner not many years ago, and Battista, the excellent
Custode of the Sacro Monte, assures me that this was the second time the
infant had been stolen.
CHAPEL NO. 7. VISIT OF THE SHEPHERDS.
Some of the figures—the Virgin, one shepherd, and four little angels—in
this chapel are believed to be by Gaudenzio, and if they are, they are
probably among his first essays, but they are lighted from above, and the
spectator looks down on them, so that the dust shows, and they can hardly
be fairly judged. The hindmost shepherd—the one with his hand to his
heart and looking up, is the finest figure; the Virgin herself is also
very good, but she wants washing.
If Fassola and Torrotti are to be believed, {140} and I am afraid I must
own that, much as I like them, I find them a little credulous, the Virgin
in this chapel is more remarkable than she appears at first sight; she
used originally to have her face turned in admiration towards the infant
Christ, but at the very first moment that she heard the bells begin to
ring for the elevation of Pope Innocent the Tenth to the popedom, she
turned round to the pilgrims visiting the place, in token of approbation;
the authorities, not knowing what to make of such behaviour, had her set
right, but she turned round a second time with a most gracious smile and
assumed the position which the elevation of no later Pope has been ever
able to disturb. Pope Innocent X. was not exactly the kind of Pope whom
one would have expected the Virgin to greet with such extraordinary
condescension. If it had been the present amiable and venerable Pontiff
there would have been less to wonder at.
CHAPEL NO. 8. CALLED BY FASSOLA AND TORROTTI THE CIRCUMCISION, AND BY
BORDIGA THE PURIFICATION.
The chapel itself is, as I have already said, one of the very oldest on
the Sacro Monte; it is doubtless much older than either the frescoes or
the terra-cotta figures which it contains, both of which are given by
Fassola, Torrotti, and Bordiga to Fermo Stella, but I cannot think they
are right in either case. The frescoes remind me more of Lanini, and are
much too modern for Fermo Stella; they are, however, in but poor
preservation, and no very definite opinion can be formed concerning them.
The terra-cotta work is, I think, also too free for Fermo Stella. The
infant Jesus is very pretty, and the Virgin would also be a fine figure
if she was not spoiled by the wig and over-much paint which restorers
have doubtless got to answer for. The work is mentioned in the 1586
edition of Caccia as completed, but there is nothing to show whether or
no it was a restoration. I have long thought I detected a certain
sub-Flemish feeling in both the Virgin and Child, and though aware that I
have very little grounds for doing so, am half inclined to think that
Tabachetti must have had something to do with them. Bordiga is clearly
wrong in calling the chapel a Purification. There are no doves, and
there must always be doves for a Purification. Besides, there was till
lately a knife ready for use lying on the table, as shown in Guidetti’s
illustration of the chapel.
CHAPEL NO. 9. JOSEPH WARNED TO FLY.
This chapel is described as completed in both the 1586 and 1590 editions
of Caccia. The figures are again given to Fermo Stella by Bordiga, but
not by either Fassola or Torrotti. I am again unable to think that
Bordiga is right. There is again, also, a sub-Flemish feeling which is
difficult to account for. The angel is a fine figure, and the heads of
the Virgin and Child are also excellent, but the folds of the drapery are
not so good. If there were any evidence, which there is not, to show
that these figures were early works of Tabachetti, and that the sleeping
St. Joseph is a first attempt at the figure which he succeeded later so
admirably in rendering, I should be inclined to accept it; as it is, I
can form no opinion about the authorship of the terra-cotta work. The
fresco background is worthless.
CHAPEL NO. 10. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT.
This chapel is of no great interest. The authors and the date are
uncertain. It is mentioned in the 1586 and 1590 editions of Caccia, but
we may be tolerably sure that Tabachetti had nothing to do with it.
Bordiga says “the figures seem to be by Stella,” which may be right or
may be wrong. Though the figures are not very good, yet this chapel has,
or had in Fassola’s time, other merits perhaps even of greater than
artistic value, for he says it is particularly useful to those who have
lost anything. “_Perditori di qualche cosa_” are more especial
recipients of grace in consequence of devotion at this particular chapel.
The flight is conducted as leisurely as flights into Egypt invariably
are, but has with it a something, I know not what—perhaps it is the
donkey—which always reminds me of Hampstead Heath on a bank holiday.
CHAPEL NO. 11. MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.
This is one of the most remarkable chapels on the Sacro Monte, and also
one of the most abounding in difficult problems. It was built with funds
provided by Carlo Emanuele I., Duke of Savoy, about the year 1586, and
took four years to complete. In the 1586–7 edition of Caccia the chapel
itself is alone given as completed. In the 1590–1 edition, it is said
that both the sculptures and the frescoes were now finished, and that
they are all “_bellissime e ben fatti_ (_sic_).” This is confirmed by an
inscription on the collar of a soldier who stan
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