_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]