Sacro Monte, Varese
FROM Mendrisio we took a trap across the country to Varese, passing
through Stabbio, where there are some baths that are much frequented by
Italians in the summer. The road is a pleasant one, but does not go
through any specially remarkable places. Travellers taking this road had
better leave every cigarette behind them on which they do not want to pay
duty, as the custom-house official at the frontier takes a strict view of
what is due to his employers. I had, perhaps, a couple of ounces of
tobacco in my pouch, but was made to pay duty on it, and the searching of
our small amount of luggage was little less than inquisitorial.
From Varese we went without stopping to the Sacro Monte, four or five
miles beyond, and several hundred feet higher than the town itself.
Close to the first chapel, and just below the arch through which the more
sacred part of the mountain is entered upon, there is an excellent hotel
called the Hotel Riposo, kept by Signor Piotti; it is very comfortable,
and not at all too hot even in the dog-days; it commands magnificent
views, and makes very good headquarters.
Here we rested and watched the pilgrims going up and down. They seemed
very good-humoured and merry. Then we looked through the grating of the
first chapel inside the arch, and found it to contain a representation of
the Annunciation. The Virgin had a real washing-stand, with a basin and
jug, and a piece of real soap. Her slippers were disposed neatly under
the bed, so also were her shoes, and, if I remember rightly, there was
everything else that Messrs. Heal & Co. would send for the furnishing of
a lady’s bedroom.
I have already said perhaps too much about the realism of these groups of
painted statuary, but will venture a word or two more which may help the
reader to understand the matter better as it appears to Catholics
themselves. The object is to bring the scene as vividly as possible
before people who have not had the opportunity of being able to realise
it to themselves through travel or general cultivation of the imaginative
faculties. How can an Italian peasant realise to himself the notion of
the Annunciation so well as by seeing such a chapel as that at Varese?
Common sense says, either tell the peasant nothing about the
Annunciation, or put every facility in his way by the help of which he
will be able to conceive the idea with some definiteness.
We stuff the dead bodies of birds and animals which we think it worth
while to put into our museums. We put them in the most life-like
attitudes we can, with bits of grass and bush, and painted landscape
behind them: by doing this we give people who have never seen the actual
animals, a more vivid idea concerning them than we know how to give by
any other means. We have not room in the British Museum to give a loose
rein to realism in the matter of accessories, but each bird or animal in
the collection is so stuffed as to make it look as much alive as the
stuffer can make it—even to the insertion of glass eyes. We think it
well that our people should have an opportunity of realising these birds
and beasts to themselves, but we are shocked at the notion of giving them
a similar aid to the realisation of events which, as we say, concern them
more nearly than any others, in the history of the world. A stuffed
rabbit or blackbird is a good thing. A stuffed Charge of Balaclava again
is quite legitimate; but a stuffed Nativity is, according to Protestant
notions, offensive.
Over and above the desire to help the masses to realise the events in
Christ’s life more vividly, something is doubtless due to the wish to
attract people by giving them what they like. This is both natural and
legitimate. Our own rectors find the prettiest psalm and hymn tunes they
can for the use of their congregations, and take much pains generally to
beautify their churches. Why should not the Church of Rome make herself
attractive also? If she knows better how to do this than Protestant
churches do, small blame to her for that. For the people delight in
these graven images. Listen to the hushed “oh bel!” which falls from
them as they peep through grating after grating; and the more tawdry a
chapel is, the better, as a general rule, they are contented. They like
them as our own people like Madame Tussaud’s. Granted that they come to
worship the images; they do; they hardly attempt to conceal it. The
writer of the authorised handbook to the Sacro Monte at Locarno, for
example, speaks of “the solemn coronation of the image that is there
revered”—“la solenne coronazione del simulacro ivi venerato” (p. 7). But
how, pray, can we avoid worshipping images? or loving images? The actual
living form of Christ on earth was still not Christ, it was but the image
under which His disciples saw Him; nor can we see more of any of those we
love than a certain more versatile and warmer presentment of them than an
artist can counterfeit. The ultimate “them” we see not.
How far these chapels have done all that their founders expected of them
is another matter. They have undoubtedly strengthened the hands of the
Church in their immediate neighbourhood, and they have given an
incalculable amount of pleasure, but I think that in the Middle Ages
people expected of art more than art can do. They hoped a fine work of
art would exercise a deep and permanent effect upon the lives of those
who lived near it. Doubtless it does have some effect—enough to make it
worth while to encourage such works, but nevertheless the effect is, I
imagine, very transient. The only thing that can produce a deep and
permanently good influence upon a man’s character is to have been
begotten of good ancestors for many generations—or at any rate to have
reverted to a good ancestor—and to live among nice people.
The chapels themselves at Varese, apart from their contents, are very
beautiful. They come as fresh one after the other as a set of variations
by Handel. Each one of them is a little architectural gem, while the
figures they contain are sometimes very good, though on the whole not
equal to those at Varallo. The subjects are the mysteries of joy,
namely, the Annunciation (immediately after the first great arch is
passed), the Salutation of Mary by Elizabeth, the Nativity, the
Presentation, and the Disputing with the Doctors. Then there is a second
arch, after which come the mysteries of grief—the Agony in the Garden,
the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, the Ascent to Calvary, and
the Crucifixion. Passing through a third arch, we come to the mysteries
of glory—the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Ghost,
and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The Dispute in the Temple is the
chapel which left the deepest impression upon us. Here the various
attitudes and expressions of the doctors are admirably rendered. There
is one man, I think he must have been a broad churchman and have taken in
the “Spectator”; his arms are folded, and he is smiling a little, with
his head on one side. He is not prepared, he seems to say, to deny that
there is a certain element of truth in what this young person has been
saying, but it is very shallow, and in all essential points has been
refuted over and over again; he has seen these things come and go so
often, &c. But all the doctors are good. The Christ is weak, and so are
the Joseph and Mary in the background; in fact, throughout the whole
series of chapels the wicked or worldly and indifferent people are well
done, while the saints are a feeble folk: the sculptor evidently neither
understood them nor liked them, and could never get beyond silliness; but
the artist who has lately done them up has made them still weaker and
sillier by giving them all pink noses.
[Picture: Sacro Monte of Varese]
Shortly after the sixth chapel has been passed the road turns a corner,
and the town on the hill (see preceding page) comes into full view. This
is a singularly beautiful spot. The chapels are worth coming a long way
to see, but this view of the town is better still: we generally like any
building that is on the top of a hill; it is an instinct in our nature to
do so; it is a remnant of the same instinct which makes sheep like to
camp at the top of a hill; it gives a remote sense of security and
vantage-ground against an enemy. The Italians seem hardly able to look
at a high place without longing to put something on the top of it, and
they have seldom done so with better effect than in the case of the Sacro
Monte at Varese. From the moment of its bursting upon one on turning the
corner near the seventh, or Flagellation chapel, one cannot keep one’s
eyes off it, and one fancies, as with S. Michele, that it comes better
and better with every step one takes; near the top it composes, as on p.
254, but without colour nothing can give an adequate notion of its
extreme beauty. Once at the top the interest centres in the
higgledy-pigglediness of the houses, the gay colours of the booths where
strings of beads and other religious knick-knacks are sold, the glorious
panorama, and in the inn where one can dine very well, and I should
imagine find good sleeping accommodation. The view from the balcony
outside the dining-room is wonderful, and above is a sketch from the
terrace just in front of the church.
[Picture: Sacro Monte of Varese, nearer View]
[Picture: Terrace at the Sacro Monte, Varese]
There is here no single building comparable to the sanctuary of
Sammichele, nor is there any trace of that beautiful Lombard work which
makes so much impression upon one in the church on the Monte Pirchiriano;
the architecture is late, and _barocco_, not to say _rococo_, reigns
everywhere; nevertheless the effect of the church is good. The visitor
should get the sacristan to show him a very fine _pagliotto_ or altar
cloth of raised embroidery, worked in the thirteenth century. He will
also do well to walk some little distance behind the town on the way to
S. Maria dei fiori (St. Mary of the flowers) and look down upon the town
and Lombardy. I do not think he need go much higher than this, unless he
has a fancy for climbing.
[Picture: Sacro Monte from above]
The Sacro Monte is a kind of ecclesiastical Rosherville Gardens,
eminently the place to spend a happy day. We happened by good luck to be
there during one of the great _feste_ of the year, and saw I am afraid to
say how many thousands of pilgrims go up and down. They were admirably
behaved, and not one of them tipsy. There was an old English gentleman
at the Hotel Riposo who told us that there had been another such _festa_
not many weeks previously, and that he had seen one drunken man there—an
Englishman—who kept abusing all he saw and crying out, “Manchester’s the
place for me.”
The processions were best at the last part of the ascent; there were
pilgrims, all decked out with coloured feathers, and priests and banners
and music and crimson and gold and white and glittering brass against the
cloudless blue sky. The old priest sat at his open window to receive the
offerings of the devout as they passed; but he did not seem to get more
than a few bambini modelled in wax. Perhaps he was used to it. And the
band played the _barocco_ music on the _barocco_ little piazza and we
were all _barocco_ together. It was as though the clergyman at Ladywell
had given out that, instead of having service usual, the congregation
would go in procession to the Crystal Palace with all their traps, and
that the band had been practising “Wait till the clouds roll by” for some
time, and on Sunday as a great treat they should have it.
The Pope has issued an order saying he will not have masses written like
operas. It is no use. The Pope can do much, but he will not be able to
get contrapuntal music into Varese. He will not be able to get anything
more solemn than “La Fille de Madame Angot” into Varese. As for fugues—!
I would as soon take an English bishop to the Surrey pantomime as to the
Sacro Monte on a _festa_.
Then the pilgrims went into the shadow of a great rock behind the
sanctuary, spread themselves out over the grass and dined.