Having been told by Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, that there were
some chapels at Saas-Fee which bore analogy to those at Varallo,
described in my book "Ex Voto," {12} I went to Saas during this last
summer, and venture now to lay my conclusions before the reader.
The chapels are fifteen in number, and lead up to a larger and singularly
graceful one, rather more than half-way between Saas and Saas-Fee. This
is commonly but wrongly called the chapel of St. Joseph, for it is
dedicated to the Virgin, and its situation is of such extreme beauty--the
great Fee glaciers showing through the open portico--that it is in itself
worth a pilgrimage. It is surrounded by noble larches and overhung by
rock; in front of the portico there is a small open space covered with
grass, and a huge larch, the stem of which is girt by a rude stone seat.
The portico itself contains seats for worshippers, and a pulpit from
which the preacher's voice can reach the many who must stand outside. The
walls of the inner chapel are hung with votive pictures, some of them
very quaint and pleasing, and not overweighted by those qualities that
are usually dubbed by the name of artistic merit. Innumerable wooden and
waxen representations of arms, legs, eyes, ears and babies tell of the
cures that have been effected during two centuries of devotion, and can
hardly fail to awaken a kindly sympathy with the long dead and forgotten
folks who placed them where they are.
The main interest, however, despite the extreme loveliness of the St.
Mary's Chapel, centres rather in the small and outwardly unimportant
oratories (if they should be so called) that lead up to it. These begin
immediately with the ascent from the level ground on which the village of
Saas-im-Grund is placed, and contain scenes in the history of the
Redemption, represented by rude but spirited wooden figures, each about
two feet high, painted, gilt, and rendered as life-like in all respects
as circumstances would permit. The figures have suffered a good deal
from neglect, and are still not a little misplaced. With the assistance,
however, of the Rev. E. J. Selwyn, English Chaplain at Saas-im-Grund, I
have been able to replace many of them in their original positions, as
indicated by the parts of the figures that are left rough-hewn and
unpainted. They vary a good deal in interest, and can be easily sneered
at by those who make a trade of sneering. Those, on the other hand, who
remain unsophisticated by overmuch art-culture will find them full of
character in spite of not a little rudeness of execution, and will be
surprised at coming across such works in a place so remote from any art-
centre as Saas must have been at the time these chapels were made. It
will be my business therefore to throw what light I can upon the
questions how they came to be made at all, and who was the artist who
designed them.
The only documentary evidence consists in a chronicle of the valley of
Saas written in the early years of this century by the Rev. Peter Jos.
Ruppen, and published at Sion in 1851. This work makes frequent
reference to a manuscript by the Rev. Peter Joseph Clemens Lommatter,
_cure_ of Saas-Fee from 1738 to 1751, which has unfortunately been lost,
so that we have no means of knowing how closely it was adhered to. The
Rev. Jos. Ant. Ruppen, the present excellent _cure_ of Saas-im-Grund,
assures me that there is no reference to the Saas-Fee oratories in the
"Actes de l'Eglise" at Saas, which I understand go a long way back; but I
have not seen these myself. Practically, then, we have no more
documentary evidence than is to be found in the published chronicle above
referred to.
We there find it stated that the large chapel, commonly, but as above
explained, wrongly called St. Joseph's, was built in 1687, and enlarged
by subscription in 1747. These dates appear on the building itself, and
are no doubt accurate. The writer adds that there was no actual edifice
on this site before the one now existing was built, but there was a
miraculous picture of the Virgin placed in a mural niche, before which
the pious herdsmen and devout inhabitants of the valley worshipped under
the vault of heaven. {13} A miraculous (or miracle-working) picture was
always more or less rare and important; the present site, therefore,
seems to have been long one of peculiar sanctity. Possibly the name Fee
may point to still earlier Pagan mysteries on the same site.
As regards the fifteen small chapels, the writer says they illustrate the
fifteen mysteries of the Psalter, and were built in 1709, each
householder of the Saas-Fee contributing one chapel. He adds that
Heinrich Andenmatten, afterwards a brother of the Society of Jesus, was
an especial benefactor or promoter of the undertaking. One of the
chapels, the Ascension (No. 12 of the series), has the date 1709 painted
on it; but there is no date on any other chapel, and there seems no
reason why this should be taken as governing the whole series.
Over and above this, there exists in Saas a tradition, as I was told
immediately on my arrival, by an English visitor, that the chapels were
built in consequence of a flood, but I have vainly endeavoured to trace
this story to an indigenous source.
The internal evidence of the wooden figures themselves--nothing analogous
to which, it should be remembered, can be found in the chapel of
1687--points to a much earlier date. I have met with no school of
sculpture belonging to the early part of the eighteenth century to which
they can be plausibly assigned; and the supposition that they are the
work of some unknown local genius who was not led up to and left no
successors may be dismissed, for the work is too scholarly to have come
from any one but a trained sculptor. I refer of course to those figures
which the artist must be supposed to have executed with his own hand, as,
for example, the central figure of the Crucifixion group and those of the
Magdalene and St. John. The greater number of the figures were probably,
as was suggested to me by Mr. Ranshaw, of Lowth, executed by a local
woodcarver from models in clay and wax furnished by the artist himself.
Those who examine the play of line in the hair, mantle, and sleeve of the
Magdalene in the Crucifixion group, and contrast it with the greater part
of the remaining draperies, will find little hesitation in concluding
that this was the case, and will ere long readily distinguish the two
hands from which the figures have mainly come. I say "mainly," because
there is at least one other sculptor who may well have belonged to the
year 1709, but who fortunately has left us little. Examples of his work
may perhaps be seen in the nearest villain with a big hat in the
Flagellation chapel, and in two cherubs in the Assumption of the Virgin.
We may say, then, with some certainty, that the designer was a cultivated
and practised artist. We may also not less certainly conclude that he
was of Flemish origin, for the horses in the Journey to Calvary and
Crucifixion chapels, where alone there are any horses at all, are of
Flemish breed, with no trace of the Arab blood adopted by Gaudenzio at
Varallo. The character, moreover, of the villains is Northern--of the
Quentin Matsys, Martin Schongauer type, rather than Italian; the same sub-
Rubensesque feeling which is apparent in more than one chapel at Varallo
is not less evident here--especially in the Journey to Calvary and
Crucifixion chapels. There can hardly, therefore, be a doubt that the
artist was a Fleming who had worked for several years in Italy.
It is also evident that he had Tabachetti's work at Varallo well in his
mind. For not only does he adopt certain details of costume (I refer
particularly to the treatment of soldiers' tunics) which are peculiar to
Tabachetti at Varallo, but whenever he treats a subject which Tabachetti
had treated at Varallo, as in the Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, and
Journey to Calvary chapels, the work at Saas is evidently nothing but a
somewhat modified abridgement of that at Varallo. When, however, as in
the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and other chapels, the
work at Varallo is by another than Tabachetti, no allusion is made to it.
The Saas artist has Tabachetti's Varallo work at his finger-ends, but
betrays no acquaintance whatever with Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gio. Ant.
Paracca, or Giovanni D'Enrico.
Even, moreover, when Tabachetti's work at Varallo is being most obviously
drawn from, as in the Journey to Calvary chapel, the Saas version differs
materially from that at Varallo, and is in some respects an improvement
on it. The idea of showing other horsemen and followers coming up from
behind, whose heads can be seen over the crown of the interposing hill,
is singularly effective as suggesting a number of others that are unseen,
nor can I conceive that any one but the original designer would follow
Tabachetti's Varallo design with as much closeness as it has been
followed here, and yet make such a brilliantly successful modification.
The stumbling, again, of one horse (a detail almost hidden, according to
Tabachetti's wont) is a touch which Tabachetti himself might add, but
which no Saas woodcarver who was merely adapting from a reminiscence of
Tabachetti's Varallo chapel would be likely to introduce. These
considerations have convinced me that the designer of the chapels at Saas
is none other than Tabachetti himself, who, as has been now conclusively
shown, was a native of Dinant, in Belgium.
The Saas chronicler, indeed, avers that the chapels were not built till
1709--a statement apparently corroborated by a date now visible on one
chapel; but we must remember that the chronicler did not write until a
century or so later than 1709, and though, indeed, his statement may have
been taken from the lost earlier manuscript of 1738, we know nothing
about this either one way or the other. The writer may have gone by the
still existing 1709 on the Ascension chapel, whereas this date may in
fact have referred to a restoration, and not to an original construction.
There is nothing, as I have said, in the choice of the chapel on which
the date appears, to suggest that it was intended to govern the others. I
have explained that the work is isolated and exotic. It is by one in
whom Flemish and Italian influences are alike equally predominant; by one
who was saturated with Tabachetti's Varallo work, and who can improve
upon it, but over whom the other Varallo sculptors have no power. The
style of the work is of the sixteenth and not of the eighteenth
century--with a few obvious exceptions that suit the year 1709
exceedingly well. Against such considerations as these, a statement made
at the beginning of this century referring to a century earlier, and a
promiscuous date upon one chapel, can carry but little weight. I shall
assume, therefore, henceforward, that we have here groups designed in a
plastic material by Tabachetti, and reproduced in wood by the best local
wood-sculptor available, with the exception of a few figures cut by the
artist himself.
We ask, then, at what period in his life did Tabachetti design these
chapels, and what led to his coming to such an out-of-the-way place as
Saas at all? We should remember that, according both to Fassola and
Torrotti (writing in 1671 and 1686 respectively), Tabachetti {14} became
insane about the year 1586 or early in 1587, after having just begun the
Salutation chapel. I have explained in "Ex Voto" that I do not believe
this story. I have no doubt that Tabachetti was declared to be mad, but
I believe this to have been due to an intrigue, set on foot in order to
get a foreign artist out of the way, and to secure the Massacre of the
Innocents chapel, at that precise time undertaken, for Gio. Ant. Paracca,
who was an Italian.
Or he may have been sacrificed in order to facilitate the return of the
workers in stucco whom he had superseded on the Sacro Monte. He may have
been goaded into some imprudence which was seized upon as a pretext for
shutting him up; at any rate, the fact that when in 1587 he inherited his
father's property at Dinant, his trustee (he being expressly stated to be
"_expatrie_") was "_datif_," "_dativus_," appointed not by himself but by
the court, lends colour to the statement that he was not his own master
at the time; for in later kindred deeds, now at Namur, he appoints his
own trustee. I suppose, then, that Tabachetti was shut up in a madhouse
at Varallo for a considerable time, during which I can find no trace of
him, but that eventually he escaped or was released.
Whether he was a fugitive, or whether he was let out from prison, he
would in either case, in all reasonable probability, turn his face
homeward. If he was escaping, he would make immediately for the Savoy
frontier, within which Saas then lay. He would cross the Baranca above
Fobello, coming down on to Ponte Grande in the Val Anzasca. He would go
up the Val Anzasca to Macugnaga, and over the Monte Moro, which would
bring him immediately to Saas. Saas, therefore, is the nearest and most
natural place for him to make for, if he were flying from Varallo, and
here I suppose him to have halted.
It so happened that on the 9th of September, 1589, there was one of the
three great outbreaks of the Mattmark See that have from time to time
devastated the valley of Saas. {15} It is probable that the chapels were
decided upon in consequence of some grace shown by the miraculous picture
of the Virgin, which had mitigated a disaster occurring so soon after the
anniversary of her own Nativity. Tabachetti, arriving at this juncture,
may have offered to undertake them if the Saas people would give him an
asylum. Here, at any rate, I suppose him to have stayed till some time
in 1590, probably the second half of it, his design of eventually
returning home, if he ever entertained it, being then interrupted by a
summons to Crea near Casale, where I believe him to have worked with a
few brief interruptions thenceforward for little if at all short of half
a century, or until about the year 1640. I admit, however, that the
evidence for assigning him so long a life rests solely on the supposed
identity of the figure known as "Il Vecchietto," in the Varallo Descent
from the Cross chapel, with the portrait of Tabachetti himself in the
Ecce Homo chapel, also at Varallo.
I find additional reason for thinking the chapels owe their origin to the
inundation of September 9, 1589, in the fact that the 8th of September is
made a day of pilgrimage to the Saas-Fee chapels throughout the whole
valley of Saas. It is true the 8th of September is the festival of the
Nativity of the Virgin Mary, so that under any circumstances this would
be a great day, but the fact that not only the people of Saas, but the
whole valley down to Visp, flock to this chapel on the 8th of September,
points to the belief that some special act of grace on the part of the
Virgin was vouchsafed on this day in connection with this chapel. A
belief that it was owing to the intervention of St. Mary of Fee that the
inundation was not attended with loss of life would be very likely to
lead to the foundation of a series of chapels leading up to the place
where her miraculous picture was placed, and to the more special
celebration of her Nativity in connection with this spot throughout the
valley of Saas. I have discussed the subject with the Rev. Jos. Ant.
Ruppen, and he told me he thought the fact that the great _fete_ of the
year in connection with the Saas-Fee chapels was on the 8th of September
pointed rather strongly to the supposition that there was a connection
between these and the recorded flood of September 9, 1589.