I HAVE now to add a short account of what remains of Tabachetti’s work at
Crea, to the very inadequate description of his work at Varallo that has
been given in some earlier chapters.
Crea is most easily approached from Casale, a large opulent commercial
town upon the Po, that has already received the waters of the Dora
Baltea, and though not yet swelled by the influx of the Ticino and Adda,
has become a noble river. The town is built entirely on the plain, but
the rich _colline_ of the Monferrato district begin to rise immediately
outside it, and continue in an endless series of vineclad slopes and
village-capped hill-tops as far as the eye can reach. These _colline_
are of exquisite beauty in themselves, and from their sides the most
magnificent views of Piedmont and the Alps extend themselves in every
direction. The people are a well-grown comely race, kind and easy to get
on with. Nothing could exceed the civility and comfort of the Hotel Rosa
Rossa, the principal inn of the city. The town contains many picturesque
bits, but in our short stay we did not see any very remarkable
architectural features, and it does not form an exception to the rule
that the eastern cities of Northern Italy are far more beautiful than the
western. The churches, never one would imagine very striking, have been
modernised and restored; nor were we told that there is any collection of
pictures in the town which is likely to prove of interest.
The visitor should leave Casale by the 7.58 A.M. train on the line for
Asti, and get out at Serralunga, the third station on the road. Here the
sanctuary of Crea can be seen crowning a neighbouring _collina_ with a
chapel that has an arcaded gallery running round it, like some of those
at Varese. Many other chapels testify to the former importance of the
place; on the whole, however, the effect of the buildings cannot compare
with that of the sanctuaries of Varallo and Varese. Taking a small
carriage, which can always be had at the station (fare, to the sanctuary
and back, eight francs), my friend, Mr. H. F. Jones, and myself ascended
to Serralunga, finding the views continually become more and more
bewitching as we did so; soon after passing through Serralunga we reached
the first chapel, and after another zigzag or two of road found ourselves
in the large open court in front of the church. Here there is an inn,
where any one who is inclined to do so could very well sleep. The piazza
of the sanctuary is some two thousand feet above the sea, and the views
are in some respects finer even than those from the Sacro Monte of Varese
itself, inasmuch as we are looking towards the chain of the Alps, instead
of away from them.
We have already seen that the sanctuary at Crea was begun about 1590, a
hundred years or so later than the Sacro Monte of Varallo, and a dozen
years earlier than that of Varese. The church attached to the convent,
in which a few monks still remain, contains a chapel with good frescoes
by Macrino D’Alba; they are somewhat damaged, and the light is so bad
that if the _guardiano_ of the sanctuary had not kindly lent us a candle
we could not have seen them. It is not easy to understand how they can
have been painted in such darkness; they are, however, the most important
work of this painter that I have yet seen, and give a more favourable
impression of him than is likely to be formed elsewhere. Behind the high
altar there is an oil picture also by Macrino d’Alba, signed as by the
following couplet, which they may scan who can:
“Hoc tibi, diva parens, posuit faciente Macrino
Bladratensis opus Johes ille Jacobus.1503.”
The “Macrino,” and “1503,” are in red paint, the rest in black. The
picture is so dark, and the view of it so much obstructed by the high
altar, that it is impossible to see it well, but it seemed good. There
is nothing else in the church, nor need the frescoes in the chapels
containing the terra-cotta figures be considered; we were told they were
painted by Caccia, better known as Moncalvo, but we could see nothing in
them to admire. The sole interest of the sanctuary—except, of course,
the surpassing beauty of its position—is vested in what few remains of
Tabachetti’s work may be found there, and in the light that these may
throw upon what he has left at Varallo.
All the work by Tabachetti now remaining at Crea consists of the
Martyrdom of St. Eusebius chapel, almost all of which is by him, perhaps
a figure or two in the Sposalizio chapel, but certainly not the figures
of St. Joseph and the Virgin, which are not even ascribed to him, the
Virgin in the Annunciation chapel, some parts of the Judith and
Holofernes, with which this subject is strangely backed; some few of the
figures in the Marriage Feast at Cana chapel, and lastly, the wreck,
which is all that remains, of the Assumption of the Virgin—commonly
called “Il Paradiso.” All the other chapels are either in a ruined state
or have been renewed with modern figures during the last thirty years,
and more especially during the last ten, at the instance, and, as we
understood, at the expense, of the present Archbishop of Milan, who does
his campagna here every summer.
The most important chapel is the Martyrdom of St. Eusebius, below the
sanctuary itself. The saint is supposed to have been martyred in front
of the church of St. Andrea at Vercelli. Some four or so of the figures
to the spectator’s right are modern restorations; among them, however,
there is a child of extreme sweetness and beauty, which must certainly be
by Tabachetti, looking up and clinging to the dress of its mother, who
has been restored, and is as commonplace as the child is the reverse.
There are two restored or rather entirely new priests close by the mother
and child, and near these is another new figure—a girl immediately to the
child’s right; this is so absurdly bad and out of proportion that it is
not easy to understand how even the restorer can have allowed himself to
make it. All the rest of the figures are by Tabachetti. A little behind
the mother and child, but more to the spectator’s right, and near to the
wall of the chapel, there stands a boy one of whose lower eyelids is
paralysed, and whose expression is one of fear and pain. This figure is
so free alike from exaggeration or shortcoming, that it is hard to praise
it too highly. Another figure in the background to the spectator’s
left—that of a goitred _crétin_ who is handing stones to one of the
stoners, has some of the same remarkably living look as is observable in
the two already referred to; so also has another man in a green
skull-cap, who is holding a small battle-axe and looking over the
stoner’s shoulders. Two of the stoners are very powerful figures. The
man on horseback, in the background, appears to be a portrait probably of
a benefactor. In spite of restoration, the work is still exceedingly
impressive. The figures behind the saint act well together, the crowd is
a crowd—a one in many, and a many in one—not, as with every one except
Tabachetti who has tried to do a crowd in sculpture, a mere collection of
units, that, whatever else they may be, are certainly not crowding one
another. The main drawback of the work is that the chapel is too small
for the subject—a matter over which Tabachetti probably had no control.
It is with very great regret that I have been unable to photograph the
work, but I was flatly refused permission to do so, though I applied
through influential people to the Archbishop himself. No one need be at
the trouble of going to see it who is not already impressed with a sense
of Tabachetti’s in some respects unrivalled genius, and who does not know
how to take into consideration the evil influences of all sorts with
which he was surrounded; those, however, who realise the magnitude of the
task attempted, who will be at the pains of putting themselves, as far as
may be, in the artist’s place and judging of the work from the
stand-point intended by him, and who will also in their imagination
restore the damage which three centuries of exposure and restoration must
assuredly have involved, will find themselves rewarded by a fuller
comprehension of the work of a sculptor of the foremost rank than they
can attain elsewhere except at Varallo itself.
I have said that some of the figures in the Sposalizio chapel, except
Joseph and Mary, are ascribed to Tabachetti. I do not know on what
grounds the ascription rests; they have been restored,—clogged with shiny
paint, and suffered every ill that could well befall them short of being
broken up and carted away. Any one who sampled Tabachetti by these
figures might well be disappointed; two or three may be by him, but
hardly more. In spite, however, of all that may be justly urged against
them, they are marked by the same attempt at concert and unity of purpose
which goes so far to redeem individual comparative want of interest. In
the background is a coloured bas-relief of Rachel and Jacob at the well
and five camels.
In the Annunciation chapel the Virgin may well be, as she is said to be,
by Tabachetti; she is a very beautiful figure, though not so fine as his
Madonna and Child in the church of St. Gaudenzio at Varallo; she has been
badly painted, and it is hard to say how much she has not suffered in
consequence. Some parts of the story of Judith and Holofernes in the
background are also good, but I do not think I should have seen
Tabachetti in them unless I had been told that he was there.
The wreck of the chapel commonly called “Il Paradiso” crowns the hill,
conspicuous for many a mile in every direction, but on reaching the
grating we found no trace of the figures that doubtless once covered the
floor of the chapel. All that remained was a huge pendant of angels,
cherubs, and saints, swarming as it were to the ceiling in an
inextricable knot of arms, legs, wings, faces, and flowing drapery; two
circles of saints, bishops, and others, who might be fitly placed in
Paradise, rising one above the other high up the walls of the chapel—the
lower circle full-length figures, and the other half-length; and above
this a higher and richly coloured crown of musical saints and angels in
good preservation. In passing I may say that this is the place where the
Vecchietto ought to have come from, though it is not likely that he did
so.
The pendant retains much of its original colour, and must once have been
a gorgeous and fitting climax. Still, no one can do much with such a
subject. To attempt it is to fly in the face of every canon by the
observance of which art can alone give lasting pleasure. It is to crib,
cabin, and confine, within the limits of well-defined sensation and
perception, ideas that are only tolerable when left in the utmost
indefiniteness consistent with thought at all. It is depressing to think
that he who could have left us portrait after portrait of all that was
noblest and loveliest in the men and women of his age—who could give a
life such as no one but himself, at any rate at that time, could
give—should have had to spend months if not years upon a work that even
when new can have been nothing better than a magnificent piece of stage
decoration.
But of such miscarriages the kingdom of art is full. In the kingdom of
art not only are many called and few chosen, but the few that do get
chosen are for the most part chosen amiss, or are lavished in the
infinite prodigality of nature. We flatter ourselves that among the
kings and queens of art, music, and literature, or at any rate in the
kingdom of the great dead, all wrongs shall be redressed, and patient
merit shall take no more quips and scorns from the unworthy: there, if an
able artist, as, we will say, F. H. Potter just dead, dies poor,
neglected, and unable to fight his way through the ranks of men with not
a tenth part of his genius, there, at any rate, shall right be done;
there the mighty shall be put down from his seat, and the lowly and meek,
if clever as well as good, shall meet his just reward. It is not so.
There is no circle so exalted but the devil has got the run of it. As
for the reputations of the great dead, they are governed in the main by
the chicane that obtains among the living; it is only after generations
of flourishing imposture, that even approximate right gets done. Look at
Raphael, see how he still reigns supreme over those who have the people’s
ears and purses at command. True, Guido, Guercino, and Domenichino have
at last tumbled into the abyss, and we know very well that Raphael will
ere long fall too, but Guido, Guercino, and Domenichino had a triumph of
some two hundred years, during which none dared lift hand against them.
Look again at that grossest of impostors—Bacon. Look at by far the
greater number of the standard classical authors, painters, and
musicians. All that can be said is that there is a _nisus_ in the right
direction which is not wholly in vain, and that though tens of thousands
of men and women of genius are as dandelion seeds borne upon the air and
perishing without visible result, yet there is here and there a seed that
really does take root and spring upwards to be a plant on the whole more
vigorous than that from which it sprung. Right and truth and justice, in
their relation to human affairs, are as asymptotes which, though
continually drawing nearer and nearer to the curve, can never reach it
but by a violation of all on which their own existence is founded.
As for the Assumption chapel, those who would see it even as a wreck
should lose no time; it is in full process of restoration; it is swept
and garnished for immediate possession by a gentleman whom we met on the
road down, and whose facility of execution in making crucified Christs
out of plaster of Paris is something almost incredible. His type of face
was Jewish, and it struck both Jones and me that his proficiency must be
in some degree due to hereditary practice. He showed us one crucifix
which he had only begun at eight o’clock that morning, and by eleven was
as good as finished. He told us he had done the brand new Disputa chapel
and the Agony in the Garden with the beautiful blue light thrown all over
Christ through deep French ultramarine glass, and he was now going on
with the other chapels as fast as he could. He said they had no oven for
baking terra-cotta figures; besides, terra-cotta was such a much slower
material to work in; he could make a gross of apostles in plaster more
quickly than a single set of twelve in terra-cotta, and the effect was
just as good when painted; so plaster of Paris and unrivalled facility of
execution are to have everything their own way. Already what I can only
call a shoddy bishop or pope or two, I forget which, have got in among
the circle of Tabachetti’s saints and angels that still remains. These
are many of them portraits full of serious dignity and unspotted by the
world of _barocco_ with which Tabachetti was surrounded. At the present
moment they have been partly scraped and show as terra-cotta; no doubt
they have suffered not a little in the scraping and will do so still
further when they are repainted, but there is no help for it. Great
works of art have got to die like everything else.
And, after all, it is as well they should, lest they come to weigh us
down too heavily. Why should a man live too long after he is dead? For
a while, yes, if he has done good service in his generation, give him a
new lease of life in the hearts and memories of his successors, but do
not let even the most eminent be too exacting; do not let them linger on
as nonagenarians when their strength is now become but labour and sorrow.
We have statutes of mortmain to restrain the dead hand from entering in
among the living—why not a statute of limitations or “a fixed period” as
against reputations and works of art—say a thousand years or so—behind
which time we will resolutely refuse to go, except in rare cases by
acclamation of the civilised world? How is it to end if we go on at our
present rate, with huge geological formations of art and book middens
accreting in every city of Europe? Who is to see them, who even to
catalogue them? Remember the Malthusian doctrine, and that the mind
breeds in even more rapid geometrical ratio than the body. With such a
surfeit of art and science the mind pails and longs to be relieved from
both. As the true life which a man lives is not in that consciousness in
the midst of which the thing he calls “himself” sits and the din and roar
of which confuse and deafen him, but in the life he lives in others, so
the true life a man’s work should live after his death is not in the
mouths but in the lives of those that follow him; in these it may live
while the world lasts, as his lives who invented the wheel or arch, but
let it live in the use which passeth all praise or thanks or even
understanding, and let the story die after a certain time as all things
else must do.
Perhaps; but at any rate let us give them decent burial. Crush the
wounded beetle if you will, but do not try to mend it. I am glad to have
seen the remains of the Assumption chapel while they are in their present
state, but am not sure whether I would not rather see them destroyed at
once, than meet the fate of restoration that is in store for them. At
the same time I am confident that no more competent restorer than the
able and eminent sculptor who has the work in hand is at all likely to be
found. My complaint is not against him, but against the utter
hopelessness of the task. I would again urge those who may be induced to
take an interest in Tabachetti’s work to lose no time in going to see
what still remains of it at Crea.
Last January I paid a second visit to Crea; and finding a scaffolding up,
was able to get on a level with the circle of full-length figures. They
were still unpainted, the terra-cotta figures showing as terra-cotta and
the plaster of Paris white. When they are all repainted the visitor will
find it less easy to say which are new figures and which old. I will
therefore say that of the lower circle of twenty full-length figures the
only two entirely new figures are the sixth to the left of the door on
entering, which represents a man holding an open book by his left hand
and resting it on his thigh, and the sixth figure to the right of the
door on entering. There are several unimportant restorations of details
of dress, feet, and clouds; the rest of the work in this circle is all by
Tabachetti.
In the circle of busts and half-length figures, the first new work to the
left of the door on entering is a figure that holds a lamb, the two
half-length figures that come next in sequence are also new—the second of
these is a nun holding a little temple. The second upper choir of angels
and saints is still in its original [?] colour and seems to have been
little touched, as also the pendant.
The chapel containing the Marriage Feast at Cana has been much restored
and badly repainted. Most of the figures are very poor, but some, and
especially a waiter with his hair parted down the middle, who is offering
a hare (not cut up) to a guest who seems to have had too much already,
are very good indeed. I find it difficult to think that this waiter can
be by any one but Tabachetti. The guitar-player is good, or rather was
good before he was repainted—so is a lady near him, so are some of the
waiters at the other end, and so are the bride and bridegroom; at any
rate they are life-like and effective as seen from outside, but the
chapel has suffered much from restoration.
There is one other chapel at Crea which may be by Tabachetti though I do
not know that it is ascribed to him, I mean the one containing figures of
the founder and his wife, a little below the main piazza. The shepherds
and sheep to the left are probably not by Tabachetti, but the lady is a
well-modelled figure. Both she, however, and her husband have been so
cruelly clogged with new paint that it is hard to form an opinion about
them.
On the piazza itself is a chapel representing the Birth of the Virgin
which is also pleasing. It is not always easy for us English to tell the
Birth of the Virgin from the Nativity, and it may help the reader to
distinguish these subjects readily if he will bear in mind, that at the
Birth of the Virgin the baby is always going to be washed—which never
happens at the Nativity; this, and that the Virgin’s mother is almost
invariably to have an egg, and generally a good deal more, whereas the
Virgin never has anything to eat or drink. The Virgin’s mother always
wants keeping up. Gaudenzio Ferrari has a Birth of the Virgin in the
Church of S. Cristoforo at Vercelli. The Virgin’s mother is eating one
egg with a spoon, and there is another coming in on a tray, which I think
is to be beaten up in wine. Something more substantial to follow is
coming in on a hot plate with a cover over it and a napkin. The baby is
to be washed of course, and the kind old head nurse is putting her hand
in the bath, while the under nurse pours in the hot water, to make sure
that the temperature is exactly right. It is to be just nicely loo-warm.
The bath itself is certainly a very little one; it will hold about a pint
and a half, but medieval washing apparatus did run rather small, and
Gaudenzio was not going to waste more of his precious space than he could
help upon so uninteresting an object as a bath; in actual life the bath
was doubtless larger. The under-under nurse is warming a towel, which
will be nicely ready when the bath is over. Joachim appears to have been
in very easy circumstances, and the arrangements could hardly be more
commodious even though the event had taken place at a certain well-known
establishment in the Marylebone Road.
At Milan, in a work that I only know by Pianazzi’s engraving, there are
two eggs coming in on a tray, and they too, I should say, are to be
beaten up in wine. The under nurse is again filling a very little bath
with warm water, and the head nurse is trying the temperature with her
hand. There is no room for the warming of the towel, but there is no
question that the towel is being warmed just out of the picture on the
left hand. Here, at Crea, the attendant is giving the Virgin’s mother a
plain boiled egg, and has a spoon in her hand with which she is going to
crack it. The Virgin’s mother is frowning and motioning it away; she is
quite as well as can be expected; still she does not feel equal to taking
solid food, and the nurse is saying, “Do try, ma’am, just one little
spoonful, the doctor said you was to have it, ma’am.” In the smaller
picture by Carpaccio at Bergamo she is again to have an egg; in the
larger she is to have some broth now, but a servant can be seen in the
kitchen plucking a fowl for dear life, so probably the larger picture
refers to a day or two later than the earlier.
The only other thing that struck us at Crea was the Virgin in the
Presentation chapel. She is so much too small that one feels as though
there must be some explanation that is not obvious. She is not more than
2 ft. 6 in. high, while the High Priest, and Joachim and St. Anne are all
life-sized. The Chief Priest is holding up his hands, and seems a good
deal surprised, as though he were saying—“Well, St. Anne my dear, I must
say you are the very smallest Virgin that I ever had presented to me
during the whole course of my incumbency.” Joachim and St. Anne seem
very much distressed, and Joachim appears to be saying, “It is not our
fault; I assure you, sir, we have done everything in our power. She has
had plenty of nourishment.” There must be some explanation of the
diminutive size of the figure that is not apparent.