THE remaining chapels are few in number, and, whatever they may once have
been, unimportant in character. The first is
CHAPEL NO. 40. THE PIETÀ.
The three preceding chapels are supposed to be on Mount Calvary, and from
them we descend by a flight of stone steps to the level of the piazza.
Immediately on reaching this we come upon the Pietà. We have seen that
this chapel originally contained Gaudenzio’s Journey to Calvary, and that
the fresco background still, in so far as it is not destroyed, treats
this subject, while the modelled figures represent the Pietà. Of
Gaudenzio’s original work Caccia says:—
“Come fu Christo de’ panni spogliato,
Montando il Monte poi Calvario detto,
Nel mezzo a manigoldi mal trattato,
Contemplar possi con pietoso affetto,
Seguito da Maria e da l’amato
Discepolo di lui, et è l’effetto
Sculto si bene e doitamente fatto
Che sembra vero e non del ver ritratto.”
“Per una scala asceso al Sacro Monte
Si entra nel più d’ogn’ altro sacro tempio,” &c.
The words “_montando il monte poi_,” &c., must refer to a supposed ascent
on the part of Christ Himself, for Gaudenzio’s work was on a level with
Tabachetti’s present Journey to Calvary which Caccia has just described,
and Caccia goes on to say that from Gaudenzio’s chapel (the present
Pietà) one “ascends by a staircase to” the most sacred chapel of all—the
Crucifixion—as one does at present. That the present Pietà and the
adjacent Entombment chapels were once one chapel, may be seen by any one
who examines the vaulting inside the first-named chapel. Signor Arienta
pointed this out to me, and at the same time called my attention to the
fact that Gaudenzio’s fresco on the wall facing the spectator does not
turn the corner and join on with the subject that fills the left-hand
wall. A flag and a horse are cut off, and the rest of them is not seen.
I sometimes question whether the original wooden-figured entombment was
in the chapel in which the present modern figures are seen, but it
probably was so.
There was also a fainting Madonna mentioned in the prose part of Caccia
as a work by itself and described as follows:—
“Come la Madonna è tramortita vedendo N.S. condotto à morte.”
This is not referred to in the poetical part, and must have been a mere
cell occupied by a single figure. No doubt it was seen through the
window that is still approached by two steps on the south side of the
present Pietà, and the space it occupied has been thrown into the present
work.
I do not know when Gaudenzio’s Journey to Calvary was dispersed, but it
was some time, doubtless, between 1600 and 1644. It is puzzling to note
that the Pietà appears in the plan of 1671 as situated rather in the part
of the building now occupied by the Entombment than by the Pietà, while
the 39 that should mark the site of the Entombment does not appear; but
this is perhaps only an error in the plan itself. I find, however, the
attempt to understand the changes that have taken place here so difficult
that I shall abandon it and will return to the present aspect of the
work.
Torrotti says that some of the statues in the present chapel are by
Gaudenzio, which they are not. Fassola gives them all to Giovanni
D’Enrico; Bordiga speaks of the work in the highest terms, but for my own
part I do not admire it, nor, I am afraid, can I accept the more
fresh-looking parts of the fresco background as by Gaudenzio. I do not
doubt that his work has been in these parts repainted, and that the
outlines alone are really his. It is not likely we have lost much by the
repainting, for where the work has not been touched it has so perished as
to be hardly worth preserving, and we may think that what has been
repainted was in much the same state. This is the only chapel in which
Gaudenzio’s frescoes at Varallo have been much repainted. If those in
the Crucifixion and Magi chapels have been retouched they have taken
little harm; the frescoes in the church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie have
certainly not been touched, and are in such good preservation that it may
be questioned whether they ever looked much better than they do now. The
fine oil picture in the church of S. Gaudenzio has gone a little yellow
through the darkening of the oil, but is in a good state, and generally,
though no painter of the highest rank has been so much neglected, or
suffered more from the actual destruction of his works, yet for the most
part Gaudenzio has been spared the reckless restoration which is the most
cruel ill that can befall an artist.
CHAPEL NO. 41. THE ENTOMBMENT.
We have already seen that this was the first chapel with figures in it on
the Sacro Monte. Of the old eight wooden figures that it contained, two
are still on the mountain in a sort of vault adjacent to, or under, the
main church, and near the furnace in which those that superseded them
were baked. Six are in the Museum at Varallo. I saw them a few weeks
ago, not yet arranged, leaning up against the wall with very battered and
dilapidated glories; the recumbent Christ was standing more or less on
end, and the whole group was in a pathetic state of dismemberment that
will doubtless soon make way for a return to their earlier arrangement.
The figures are interesting, but it cannot be pretended that they are of
great value. They look very much as if they had been out somewhere the
night before.
Of the figures in the present chapel the less said the better.
REMAINING CHAPELS AND CHIESA MAGGIORE.
The chapel of St. Francis is open to the air, and contains nothing but an
altar, and a modern fresco of the death of the saint.
Near it is the Holy Sepulchre, which is entered from a small cell in
which there is a figure of the Magdalene, and from which the visitor must
creep on hands and knees into the Sepulchre itself. The figure of Christ
is not actually in the Sepulchre, but can be seen through a window
opening into the contiguous chapel, where it is over the altar. The
early writers say that there were also two angels by Gaudenzio (_statue
di Gaudenzio divoissime_), but Bordiga says nothing of this. The upper
part of this building was the abode of Bernardino Caimi and his
successors until the year 1577.
As for the Holy Sepulchre itself it is low and dark, which I have no
doubt is the reason why I have neglected it on the occasions of each of
my two latest visits to Varallo, and thus failed to reach the adjacent
Oratory, which Bordiga says was erected about the year 1702. Fassola and
Torrotti wrote before this date, so that the angels mentioned by them as
by Gaudenzio may have been removed when the present fabric was erected.
At any rate Bordiga speaks as though they were paintings by one Tarquinio
Grassi and not sculptured figures at all. Torrotti says that visitors to
the Holy Sepulchre used to burn candles, tapers, and torches, each one
according to his purse or piety, and that they did this not so much to
see with as to pray. “Here,” he continues, “the great S. Carlo spent his
evenings agreeably” (_spendeva gradevolmente le notti_). “Few,” he
concludes drily, and perhaps with a shade of the same quiet irony that
led the Psalmist to say what he did about “one” day in certain courts,
“can leave it without feeling devoutly thankful.” About the candles
Fassola says that there was a kind of automatic arrangement for getting
them like that whereby we can now buy butter-scotch or matches at the
railway stations, by dropping a penny into a slot. He says:—
“And as the figure of Christ can only be seen by the help of candles
(for which reason all pilgrims whose means permit are accustomed to
burn them, being naturally prompted thereto each one according to his
faith)—by throwing money into a hole wherein the same candles lie,
each pilgrim can be made quite comfortable, and contented.”
[“Gettando il denaro per un buco dove stanno le medesime candelette,
commodamente può restar ogni divoto contento.”]
“The mercies vouchsafed here,” continues the same writer; “are
innumerable—in all parts may be seen votive pictures both old and
recent.”
In the open cloister hard by is shown the wooden bed on which S. Carlo
lay when he came to visit the Sacro Monte, and the stone which is said to
be a facsimile of the one rolled in front of the Holy Sepulchre itself.
Many years ago I spent several weeks at Varallo sketching and painting on
the Sacro Monte. A most excellent and lovable old priest, now doubtless
long since dead, took rather a fancy to me, and used to implore me to
become a Catholic. One day he took me up to this stone and spoke long
and earnestly about it. What a marvellous miracle it was. There was the
stone; I could see it for myself. What a dumb but eloquent testimony was
it not offering; how could I account for such things? and more to the
same effect, all said obviously in good faith, and with no idea save that
of guiding me to the truth. I was powerless. I could not go into facts
or arguments—I could not be obstinate without getting something like his
consent—and he was instant in season and out of season in endeavouring to
get mine. At last I could stand it no longer, and said, “My dearest sir,
I am the son of an English clergyman who is himself the son of another
English clergyman; my father and mother are living. If you will tell me
that I am to hold my father born in more than common sin, to have
committed a crime in marrying my mother, and that I am to hold myself as
one who ought never to have been born, then I will accept what you have
said about that stone. Till then let me go my way, and you yours.” He
said not a word more, and never again approached the subject; the nearest
he ever went to it was to say that he liked to see me sketching about the
Sacro Monte, for it could do me nothing but good. I trust that I have
done it no harm.
The chapel representing the Magdalene at the feet of the risen Christ has
disappeared. It contained two statues only, and two prophets by
Gaudenzio were painted outside on the wall. It stood “_Sotto un auanzo
dei Portici antichi seguentemente al Sepolcro_.” It was probably a very
early work.
Through an arch under the raised portico or arcaded gallery are three
small ruined cells called now “Il Paradiso,” and numbered 43, 44, and 45;
of one of these Fassola tells us that it contained “many modern statues”
by Gaudenzio Sceti, and frescoes by Gianoli; they are all now mere
wrecks. There is no important work by Gaudenzio Sceti remaining on the
Sacro Monte, but there is a terra-cotta crucifix with a Virgin and a St.
John by him, of no great value, in the church of S. Gaudenzio. What
remains of his work on the Sacro Monte itself consists of statues of Sta.
Anna and the Virgin as a child upon her lap in the chapel or cell
numbered 43.
Chapel 44 need not detain us. What few remains of figures it contains
are uninteresting and ruined.
I have already spoken of chapel No. 45, which once represented an
entombment of the Madonna, as in all probability the oldest building, and
as certainly containing the oldest, and by no means least interesting
frescoes on the Sacro Monte. There is nothing inside the chapel except
these frescoes, but outside it there are many scrawls, of which the
earliest I have noticed is 1520—the supposed 1437 being certainly 1537.
The writer of one of these scrawls has added the words “fuit hic” to his
signature as John Van Eyck has done to the signature of his portrait of
John Arnolfini and his wife. I have found this addition of “fuit hic” in
a signature of a certain “Cardinalis de al . . . ” who scratched his name
“1389 die 19 Mag” on a fresco to the left of the statue of S. Zenone in
the church S. Zenone at Verona. On a fresco in the very interesting
castle of Fénis in the valley of Aosta, to which I hope to return in
another work, there is scratched “Hic sponsus cum sponsâ fuit 1790 25
May,” the “May” being an English May; Jones and I thought the writer had
begun to add “London” but had stopped. The “fuit hic,” therefore, of
John Van Eyck’s signature should not be translated as we might be tempted
to wish to translate it, “This was John Van Eyck.”
Returning to the Sacro Monte, there remains only the Chiesa Vecchia,
removed at the end of the last century to make room for the building that
was till lately the “_casa degli esercizi_,” or house in which the
priests on the mountain performed their spiritual exercises. This is now
let out in apartments during the summer, and is called the Casino. The
old sacristy, now used as the _archivio_ of the Sacro Monte, still
remains, and contains a fresco by Lanini, that bears strong traces of the
influence of his master Gaudenzio. Besides the impress of Christ’s foot
and the Assumption of the Virgin, the church contained an Annunciation by
Gaudenzio and frescoes of St. Catherine and St. Cecilia; the Cupola was
also decorated by him. This work was undertaken in 1530, the greater
angels being by Gaudenzio and the smaller by Lanini and Fermo Stella.
These frescoes all perished when the church was pulled down.
The present Chiesa Maggiore was begun on the 9th of June 1614—D’Enrico’s
design having, so Bordiga says, been approved on the 1st of April in that
year. Fassola says that in 1671 the only parts completed were the Choir
and Cupola, the whole body of the church being left unfinished. Bordiga
speaks of the church as having been finished in 1649, in which year, on
the feast of the Birth of the Virgin, her image was taken from the old
church and placed in the new, so when Fassola says “unfinished” he must
refer to decoration only. The steps leading up to the church and the
unfinished columns were erected in 1825 from designs by Marchese Don
Luigi Cagnola, the architect of the Arco della Pace at Milan. It was ere
long found that the stone selected was unreliable, so that all must be
done over again; the work has, therefore, been suspended.
The Cupola is covered with about 140 modelled figures of angels, by
Dionigi Bussola and Giambattista Volpino, Milanese sculptors, who worked
from designs made by Antonio Tempesta, a Florentine. They did this work
about the year 1660. The brothers Montalti painted the frescoes, some
more highly coloured groups being added by Antonio Cucchi of Milan in
1750.
In the crypt there is a sumptuous shrine containing the statue of the
Madonna, said to have been made by St. Luke. This was erected in 1854,
but on the night between the 4th and 5th of October in the same year the
crown was stolen from the Virgin’s head, and in the following year there
was a solemn expiatory function, with festivities extending over three
days, in order to celebrate the replacing of the stolen crown by a new
one.
It cannot be said that any of the works of art now in the church are of
considerable interest, but an important work of art was nevertheless
produced in it at the celebration of the fourth centenary of the birth of
Gaudenzio Ferrari, which was held in 1885. I refer to the Mass by
Cagnoni, which was here performed for the first time, and which showed
that the best traditions of old Italian ecclesiastical music are still
occasionally adhered to. I was present at the production of the work,
and have heard no modern Italian music that has pleased me nearly as
much. I ventured to ask the Maestro for the baton he had used in
conducting it, and am proud to keep it as a memorial of a fine
performance of a very fine work. The baton is several old newspapers
neatly folded up and covered with silk.