_CHAPELS No._ 12–_No._ 22.
WE now begin the series of chapels that deal with Christ’s Manhood,
Ministry, and Passion. The first of these is
CHAPEL NO. 12. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST BY JOHN.
The statues are of no great interest, and of unknown authorship. The
frescoes are by Orazio Gallinone di Treviglio, but they are not striking.
The date of the chapel is about 1585. It is mentioned in the 1586
edition of Caccia, and it is added that the water of the fountain would
be brought there shortly so as to imitate the Jordan. This was done, but
the water made the chapel so damp that it was turned off again. The
graces, according to Fassola, are chiefly for married ladies.
CHAPEL NO. 13. TEMPTATION.
This chapel is given as completed in the 1586 edition of Caccia, and had
probably been by this time reconstructed by Tabachetti, to whom the work
is universally and no doubt justly ascribed.
[Picture: Plate No. VI. The Temptation in the Wilderness. By Tabchetti]
That the figures of Christ and of the devil have both been cut about may
be conjectured from their draperies being in part real linen or calico,
and not terra-cotta; Christ’s red shirt front is real, as also is a great
part of the devil’s dress. This last personage is a most
respectable-looking patriarchal old Jewish Rabbi. I should say he was
the leading solicitor in some such town as Samaria, and that he gave an
annual tea to the choir. He is offering Christ some stones just as any
other respectable person might do, and if it were not for his formidable
two clawed feet there would be nothing to betray his real nature. The
beasts with their young are excellent. The porcupine has real quills.
The fresco background is by Melchior D’Enrico, and here the fall of the
devil when the whole is over is treated with a realistic unreserve little
likely to be repeated. He is dreadfully unwell. The graces in this
chapel are more especially for those tempted by the world, the flesh, and
the devil, for people who are bewitched, and for those who are in any
wise troubled in mind, body, and estate, “as the varying views of the
pilgrims themselves will best determine.”
Bordiga says that the chapel was begun about 1580, and completed in 1594,
but he refers probably to Tabachetti’s reconstruction, for in the portico
there is an inscription painted by order of the Bishop, and forbidding
visitors to deface the walls, that is dated 1524, and the back of the
chapel has many early 16th century scratches.
CHAPEL NO. 14. THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.
This chapel is given as completed in the 1586 edition of Caccia, so that
Bordiga and Cusa are wrong in dating it 1598. In the poetical part of
Caccia it is described as recently made and “_ben ritratto_.” The woman
of Samaria is a fine buxom figure, but the paint has peeled off so badly
both from her and from the Christ that it is hardly fair to judge the
work at all. I should think it was very possibly an early work by
Tabachetti, but should be sorry to hazard a decided opinion. The
frescoes are without interest. The graces at this chapel were chiefly
for women who wanted to abandon some evil practice, and for rain when the
country was suffering from long drought. This last is because Christ
said to the woman of Samaria “Give me to drink.”
CHAPEL NO. 15. THE PARALYTIC.
The chapel alone was completed by 1586 and 1590, so that we may be
certain Tabachetti had no hand in it. The statues are said to be by
D’Enrico, whom we meet here for the first time. Bordiga praises them
very highly, but neither Jones nor I liked the composition as much as we
should have wished to have done. Some of the individual figures are
good, especially a man with his arm in a sling, and two men conversing on
the left of the composition, but there is too little concerted and united
action, and too much attempt to show off every figure to the best
advantage, to the sacrifice of more important considerations. They
probably date from 1620–1624, in which last year Bordiga says that the
frescoes were completed. These are chiefly, if not entirely, by
Cristoforo Martinolo, a Valsesian artist and pupil of Morazzone, who,
according to Bordiga, though little known, has here shown himself no
common artist. Again neither Jones nor I admired them as much as we
should have been glad to do. “All infirmities of fever, and paralysis,”
says Fassola, “if recommended to the Great Saviour at this place will be
dissipated, as may be gathered from the many _voti_ here exhibited.”
CHAPEL NO. 16. THE WIDOW’S SON AT NAIN.
Of this chapel the walls are alone mentioned as completed in 1590. So
that Bordiga and Cusa are again wrong in saying that the frescoes were
painted about 1580. It is not good. The walls were probably raised soon
after 1580. Donna Mathilde di Savoia, Marchesa di Pianezza, a natural
daughter of Carlo Emmanuele I., was among the principal contributors.
The graces were “for those who had had bad falls or any accidents whereby
they had been rendered speechless, stupid, senseless, and apparently
dead.”
It will be observed on referring to the plan facing p. 68, that this
chapel is given as on the ground now occupied by Christ taken before
Annas, and faces the Herod chapel on the Piazza dei Tribunali. This may
be a mere error in the plan, but the plan is generally accurate, and it
is very likely that a change was made in the middle of the last century
when the Annas chapel was built.
CHAPEL NO. 17. THE TRANSFIGURATION.
This is on the highest ground of the Sacro Monte, the Transfiguration
being supposed to have happened on Mount Sinai. Inside the chapel they
have made Mount Sinai, but Fassola says that it was originally quite too
high, and the Fabbricieri had ordered it to be made lower, “so as to
render it more enjoyable by the eye.” It was begun at the end of the
sixteenth century, but is mentioned as being only “founded” in the 1586
and 1590 editions of Caccia, and the work seems to have got little
further than the foundations, until in 1660 it was resumed; Fassola,
writing in 1671, says that the chapel was “_levata in alto da terra
l’anno del mille_, _sei cento e sessanta_,” or about ten years before his
book appeared; it was still in great part unpainted, and he makes an
appeal to his readers to contribute towards its completion. From both
Fassola and Torrotti it would appear that only the group of figures on
the mountain was in existence when they wrote. They both of them make
the extraordinary statement that these figures are by Giovanni D’Enrico,
whom they must have perfectly well known to have been dead more than a
quarter of a century before Fassola wrote, and many years before the
figures could possibly have been placed where they now are. It is much
as though I, writing now, were to ascribe Boehm’s statue of Mr. Darwin,
in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, to Chantrey. The
figures on the mountain are among the worst on the Sacro Monte. I see
that Cusa ascribes the figures of Peter, James, and John only to
D’Enrico, but the ascription is very difficult to understand.
Bordiga does not say who did the figures of Peter, James, and John, but
he gives the Christ, Moses, and Elias to Pietro Francesco Petera of
Varallo. The fourteen figures at the foot of the mountain he assigns to
Gaudenzio Soldo of Camasco, a pupil of the sculptor Dionigi Bussola. In
1665 Giuseppe and Stefano Danedi, called Montalti, and pupils of
Morazzone, “painted the cupola of the chapel with innumerable angels
great and small exhibiting the most varied movements.” Giuseppe had the
greater share in this work, in which may be seen, according to Bordiga,
signs of the influence of Guido, under whom Giuseppe had studied.
Among the figures below the mountain there is a blind man, and a boy with
a bad foot leading him—both good—and a contemptuous father telling the
Apostles that they cannot cure his son, and that he had told them so from
the first, but the paint is peeling off the figures so much that the work
can hardly be judged fairly. When photographed they look much better,
and Signor Pizetta tells me he was last year commissioned to photograph
the boy, who is in a fit of hystero-epilepsy, for a medical work that was
being published in France, so it is probably very true to nature.
CHAPEL NO. 18. RAISING OF LAZARUS.
Fassola says that this chapel was erected at the expense of Pomponio
Bosso, a noble Milanese, between the years 1560 and 1580. It is
mentioned as finished in the 1586 edition of Caccia, and was probably
completed before Tabachetti came. Bordiga only says that it was finished
in 1582. The statues are of little or no merit, nor yet the frescoes. I
observe that in Caccia the “tempio” is praised but not apparently the
work that it contained. The terra-cotta figures are ascribed by Bordiga
to Ravello, and the frescoes to Testa, whose brother, Lorenzo Testa, was
Fabbriciere at the time the chapel was erected. There is one rather nice
little man in the left-hand corner, but there is nothing else.
CHAPEL NO. 19. ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM.
The figures in this chapel are ascribed to Giovanni D’Enrico by both
Fassola and Torrotti, an ascription very properly set aside by Bordiga,
without assigned reason, but probably because 1590 is considerably too
early for Giovanni D’Enrico, and there is a document dated May 23, 1590,
showing that the fresco background was then contracted for. The
sculptured figures are mentioned as finished in the 1586 edition of
Caccia, so that D’Enrico could not have done them. They are better than
those in the preceding chapels, but they do not arouse enthusiasm, and
have suffered so much from decay, and from repainting, that it is hardly
fair to form any opinion about them. They probably looked much better
when new. The landscape part of the background is by one of the brothers
Rovere, named, as I have said, Fiamenghini, and he has introduced a house
with a stepped gable like those at Antwerp. Some of the figures in the
background appear to be by the painter Testa, who is named in the
document above referred to.
CHAPEL NO. 20. THE LAST SUPPER.
This was one of the earliest chapels, and is mentioned as completed in
the 1586 edition of Caccia. The figures are of wood, stiff, and
lifeless, the supper is profuse and of much later date than the figures,
but the whole scene is among the least successful on the Sacro Monte.
Originally, but not till many years after the figures had been made and
placed, Lanini painted a fresco background for this chapel. Perhaps
Gaudenzio brought him from Vercelli on the occasion of the temporary
return to Varallo supposed by Colombo to have taken place between 1536
and 1539. If we could know when Lanini was on the Sacro Monte doing this
background, we might suspect that Gaudenzio was not far off. Lanini’s
work has unfortunately perished in a second reconstruction of the chapel.
Torrotti in 1686 says that a reconstruction of the Cena chapel was then
contemplated, but that Lanini’s frescoes were not to be touched. The
original Cena chapel may or may not have been on its present site, but
the first restoration certainly was so, as appears from the plan dated
1671 already given. The apostles have real napkins round their
shoulders. The graces are for people who feel themselves deficient in
faith, and intercession may be made here for obstinate sinners.
CHAPEL NO. 21. THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN.
This chapel, again, has been reconstructed, but the old figures have not
been preserved as in the case of the Cena, nor yet has the original site.
The original site, according to Bordiga, was apart from the other chapels
at the foot of the neighbouring _monticello_, meaning, presumably, the
height on which the Transfiguration chapel now stands. It was at this
old chapel that S. Carlo used to spend hours in prayer. It was one of
the earliest, and the figures were of wood. Fassola says that it was the
angel who was offering the cup to Christ in the old chapel who announced
his approaching end to S. Carlo, but the figures had been removed in his
time as they were perishing, and the terra-cotta ones by Giovanni
D’Enrico had been substituted, with a fresco background by his brother
Melchiorre. These in their turn perished during a reconstruction some
twenty years or so ago. The graces at this chapel are thus described by
Fassola.
“Il moderno e Christo ed Angiolo nel medemo stato rinouati non sono
meno miraculosi, perche tutti li concorrenti, bisognosi di pazienza
di soffrire trauagli, malattie, ed ogni sorte d’ infermità tanto
dell’ anima, quanto del corpo caldamente racomandandosi al piacere di
questo sudante Christo riportano ciò che meglio per lo stato di
questo, ed altro Mondo fà di necessità alle loro persone.”
I find no mention of any original fresco background, though I do of the
one added afterwards by Melchiorre D’Enrico, now no longer in existence.
As this was one of the earliest chapels, I incline to think that there
was no fresco background in the first instance.
CHAPEL NO. 22. THE SLEEPING APOSTLES.
Fassola says that this chapel was decorated about fifty years (really
fifty-nine) before the date at which he was writing, by Melchiorre
D’Enrico. It was then on its present site, but the end of the Cena block
was rebuilt some twenty years ago. The present Custode, Battista, tells
me he worked at the rebuilding, and taking me upstairs showed me a trace
or two of Melchiorre’s background. The sleeping Apostles are said to be
by Giovanni D’Enrico; they will not bear comparison with Tabachetti’s St.
Joseph. The benefactor was Count Pio Giacomo Fassola di Rassa, a
collateral ancestor of the historian. People who have become lethargic
in their self-indulgence, or who are blinded through some bad habit, will
find relief at this chapel. I have met with nothing to show that there
was any earlier chapel with the same subject, and in the 1586 edition of
Caccia it is expressly mentioned as one of those that as yet were merely
contemplated, though the Agony in the Garden itself is described as
completed.