_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.