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, 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.
{190} 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 anyone 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 wood-carver 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 abridgment 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 anyone 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 wood-carver 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
{195} 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. {196} 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 9th September, 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 9th September, 1589.