traveller back to Biella, and up the hills behind the town. The drive
is long, but so diversified, so abounding in beauty, that in nearing
its end one feels the need of an impressive monument to close so
nobly ordered an approach. As the road rises above the vineyards of
Biella, as the house-roofs, the church-steeples and the last suburban
villas drop below the line of vision, there breaks upon the eye the
vast undulating reach of the Piedmontese plain. From the near massing
of cultivated verdure--the orchards, gardens, groves of the minutely
pencilled foreground--to the far limit where earth and sky converge
in silver, the landscape glides through every gradation of sun-lit
cloud-swept loveliness. First the Val d’Andorno unbosoms its wooded
depths; then the distances press nearer, blue-green and dappled with
forest, with the towns of Biella, Novara and Vercelli like white fleets
anchored on a misty sea. This view, with its fold on fold of woodland,
dusky-shimmering in the foreground, then dark blue, with dashes of
tawny sunlight and purple streaks of rain, till it fades into the
indeterminate light of the horizon, suggests some heroic landscape of
Poussin’s, or the boundless russet distances of Rubens’s “Château of
Stein.”
Meanwhile the foreground is perpetually changing. The air freshens, the
villages with their flower-gardens and their guardian images of the
Black Virgin are left behind, and between the thinly-leaved beeches
rise bare gravelly slopes backed by treeless hills. The Loreto of
Piedmont lies nearly four thousand feet above the sea, and even in
June there is a touch of snow in the air. For a moment one fancies
one’s self in Switzerland; but here, at the bend of the road, is a
white chapel with a classic porch, within which a group of terra-cotta
figures enact some episode of the Passion. Italy has reasserted herself
and art has humanized the landscape. More chapels are scattered through
the trees, but one forgets to note them as the carriage turns into a
wide grassy forecourt, bordered by stone pyramids and dominated at its
farther end by the great colonnade of the hospice. A _rampe douce_ with
fine iron gates leads up to an outer court enclosed in the arcaded
wings of the building. Under these arcades are to be found shops in
which the pilgrim may satisfy his various wants, from groceries, wines
and cotton umbrellas (much needed in these showery hills), to rosaries,
images of the Black Virgin, and pious histories of her miracles. Above
the arcades the pilgrims are lodged; and in the centre of the inner
façade Juvara’s marble portico unfolds its double flight of steps.
Passing through this gateway, one stands in a spacious inner
quadrangle. This again is enclosed in low buildings resting on
arcades, their alignment broken only by the modest façade of the
church. Outside there is the profane bustle of life, the clatter of
glasses at the doors of rival _trattorie_, the cracking of whips, the
stir of buying and selling; but a warm silence holds the inner court.
Only a few old peasant women are hobbling, rosary in hand, over the
sun-baked flags to the cool shelter of the church. The church is indeed
cavernously cold, with that subterranean chill peculiar to religious
buildings. The interior is smaller and plainer than one had expected;
but presently it is seen to be covered with a decoration beside which
the rarest tapestry or fresco might sink into insignificance. This
covering is composed of innumerable votive offerings, crowding each
other from floor to vaulting over every inch of wall, lighting the
chapels with a shimmer of silver and tinsel, with the yellow of old
wax legs and arms, and the gleam of tarnished picture-frames: each
overlapping scale of this strange sheath symbolizing some impulse of
longing, grief or gratitude, so that, as it were, the whole church is
lined with heart-beats. Most of these offerings are the gift of the
poor mountain-folk, and the paintings record with artless realism the
miraculous escapes of carters, quarrymen and stone-cutters. In the
choir, however, hang a few portraits of noble donators in ruffs and
Spanish jerkins; and one picture, rudely painted on the wall itself,
renders with touching fidelity the interior of a peasant’s house in the
sixteenth or seventeenth century, with the mother kneeling by a cradle
over which the Black Virgin sheds her reassuring light.
The ebony Virgin herself (another “find” of the indefatigable Saint
Eusebius) is enthroned behind the high altar, in a tiny chapel built
by her discoverer, where, in a blaze of altar-lights, the miraculous
image, nimbused in jewels and gold, showers a dazzling brightness
on the groups who succeed each other at her iron lattice. The
incense-laden air and the sweating stone walls encrusted with votive
offerings recall at once the chapel of Loreto; but here the smaller
space, the deeper dusk, heighten the sense of holiness and solemnity;
and if a few white-capped Sisters are grouped against the grating,
while before the altar a sweet-voiced young priest intones the mystic
_Mater purissima,
Mater admirabile,
Mater prudentissima,_
punctuated by the wailing _Ora pro nobis!_ of the nuns, it would be
hard to picture a scene richer in that mingling of suavity and awe with
which the Church composes her incomparable effects.
After so complex an impression the pleasures of the eye may seem a
trifle thin; yet there is a great charm in the shaded walks winding
through the colony of chapels above the monastery. Nothing in nature is
lovelier than a beech-wood rustling with streams; and to come, in such
a setting, on one graceful _tempietto_ after another, to discover, in
their semi-pagan porches, groups of peasants praying before some dim
presentment of the Passion, gives a renewed sense of the way in which,
in Italy, nature, art and religion combine to enrich the humblest
lives. These Sacred Mounts, or Stations of the Cross, are scattered
everywhere on the Italian slopes of the Alps. The most famous is at
Varallo, and to find any artistic merit one must go there, or to San
Vivaldo in Tuscany, or the unknown hill-village of Cerveno in the Val
Camonica. At Oropa the groups are relatively crude and uninteresting;
but the mysterious half-light in which they are seen, and the
surrounding murmur of leaves and water, give them a value quite
independent of their plastic qualities.
* * * * *
Varallo itself is but a day’s journey from Andorno, and in June weather
the drive thither is beautiful. The narrow country road mounts through
chestnut-groves as fine as those which cast their velvet shade for
miles about Promontogno in the Val Bregaglia. At first the way dips
continuously from one green ravine to another, but at Mosso Santa
Maria, the highest point of the ascent, the glorious plain again
bursts into view, with white roads winding toward distant cities,
and the near flanks of the hills clothed in unbroken forest. The Val
Sesia is broader than the Val d’Andorno, and proportionately less
picturesque; but its expanse of wheat and vine, checkered with shade
and overhung by piled-up mossy rocks, offers a restful contrast to the
landscape of the higher valleys. As Varallo is neared the hills close
in again and the scenery regains its sub-Alpine character. The first
unforgettable glimpse of the old town is caught suddenly at a bend of
the road, with the Sanctuary lifted high above the river, and tiled
roofs and church-towers clustered at its base. The near approach is a
disenchantment; for few towns have suffered more than Varallo under the
knife of “modern improvement,” and those who did not know it in earlier
days would hardly guess that it was once the most picturesque town in
North Italy. A dusty wide-avenued suburb, thinly scattered with cheap
villas, now leads from the station to the edge of the old town; and
the beautiful slope facing the Sacred Mountain has been cleared of its
natural growth and planted with moribund palms and camellias, to form
the “pleasure” grounds of a huge stucco hotel with failure written over
every inch of its pretentious façade.
One knows not whether to lament the impairment of such rare
completeness, or to find consolation in the fact that Varallo is rich
enough not to be ruined by its losses. Ten or fifteen years ago every
aspect was enchanting; now one must choose one’s point of view, but
one or two of the finest are still intact. Turning one’s back, for
instance, on the offending hotel, one has still, on a summer morning,
the rarest vision of wood and water and happily-blended architecture:
the Sesia with its soft meadows and leafy banks, the old houses huddled
above it, and the high cliff crowned by the chapels of the Sacred Way.
At night all melts to a diviner loveliness. The clustered darkness of
the town, twinkling with lights, lies folded in hills delicately traced
against a sky mauve with moonlight. Here and there the moon burnishes a
sombre mass of trees, or makes a campanile stand out pale and definite
as ivory; while high above, the summit of the cliff projects against
the sky, with an almost Greek purity of outline, the white domes and
arches of the Sanctuary.
The centre of the town is also undisturbed. Here one may wander through
cool narrow streets with shops full of devotional emblems, and of
the tall votive candles gaily spangled with gold, and painted with
flower-wreaths and _mandorle_ of the Virgin. These streets, on Sundays,
are thronged with the peasant women of the neighbouring valleys in
their various costumes: some with cloth leggings and short dark-blue
cloth petticoats embroidered in colours; others in skirts of plaited
black silk, with embroidered jackets, silver necklaces and spreading
head-dresses; for nearly every town has its distinctive dress, and
some happy accident seems to have preserved this slope of the Alps
from the depressing uniformity of modern fashions. In architectural
effects the town is little richer than its neighbours; but it has that
indescribable “tone” in which the soft texture of old stucco and the
bloom of weather-beaten marble combine with a hundred happy accidents
of sun and shade to produce what might be called the _patine_ of Italy.
There is, indeed, one remarkable church, with a high double flight
of steps leading to its door; but this (though it contains a fine
Gaudenzio) passes as a mere incident in the general picturesqueness,
and the only church with which the sight-seer seriously reckons is that
of Santa Maria delle Grazie, frescoed with the artist’s scenes from the
Passion.
[Illustration:
_The Main Court of the Sacro Monte at Varallo_
E. C. Peixotto
VARALLO. 1901.
]
There is much beauty of detail in these crowded compositions; but, to
the inexpert, Gaudenzio lives perhaps chiefly as the painter of the
choiring angels of Saronno: so great there that elsewhere he seems
relatively unimportant. At Varallo, at least, one associates him
first with the Sacred Mountain. To this great monument of his native
valley he contributed some of his most memorable work, and it seems
fitting that on turning from his frescoes in Santa Maria one should
find one’s self at the foot of the path leading to the Sanctuary. The
wide approach, paved with tiny round pebbles polished by the feet
of thousands of pilgrims, leads round the flank of the cliff to the
park-like enclosure on its summit. Here, on the ledge overlooking the
town, stands the church built by Saint Charles Borromeo (now disfigured
by a modern façade), and grouped about it are the forty-two chapels
of the “New Jerusalem.” These little buildings, to which one mounts
or descends by mossy winding paths beneath the trees, present every
variety of pseudo-classical design. Some, placed at different levels,
are connected by open colonnades and long flights of steps; some have
airy loggias, overlooking gardens tufted with blush-roses and the lilac
iris; while others stand withdrawn in the deep shade of the beeches.
Each chapel contains a terra-cotta group representing some scene in
the divine history, and the site and architecture of each building
have been determined by a subtle sense of dramatic fitness. Thus, the
chapels enclosing the earlier episodes--the Annunciation, the Nativity
and the scenes previous to the Last Supper--are placed in relatively
open sites, with patches of flowers about their doorsteps; while as the
drama darkens the pilgrim descends into deep shady hollows, or winds
along chill stone corridors and up and down interminable stairs; a
dark subterranean passage leading at last to the image of the buried
Christ.
Of the groups themselves it is difficult to speak dispassionately,
for they are so much a part of their surroundings that one can hardly
measure them by any conventional standard. To do so, indeed, would be
to miss their meaning. They must be studied as a reflection of the
Bible story in the hearts of simple and emotional peasants; for it was
the piety of the mountain-folk that called them into being, and the
modellers and painters who contributed to the work were mostly natives
of Val Sesia or of the neighbouring valleys. The art of clay modelling
is peculiarly adapted to the rendering of strong and direct emotions.
So much vivacity of expression do its rapid evocations permit, that
one might almost describe it as intermediate between pantomime and
sculpture. The groups at Varallo have the defects inherent in such
an improvisation: the crudeness, the violence, sometimes even the
seeming absurdities of an instantaneous photograph. These faults are
redeemed by a simplicity and realism which have not had time to harden
into conventionality. The Virgin and Saint Elizabeth are low-browed
full-statured peasant women; the round-cheeked romping children, the
dwarfs and hunchbacks, the Roman soldiers and the Jewish priests,
have all been transferred alive from the market-places of Borgo Sesia
and Arona. These expressive figures, dressed in real clothes, with
real hair flowing about their shoulders, seem like the actors in some
miracle-play arrested at its crowning moment.
Closer inspection brings to light a marked difference in quality
between the different groups. Those by Tabacchetti and Fermo Stella
are the best, excepting only the remarkable scene of the Crucifixion,
attributed to Gaudenzio, and probably executed from his design.
Tabacchetti is the artist of the Adam and Eve surrounded by the
supra-terrestrial flora and fauna of Eden: a curious composition, with
a golden-haired Eve of mincing elegance and refinement. To Stella are
due some of the simplest and most moving scenes of the series: the
Adoration of the Magi, the message of the angel to Joseph, and Christ
and the woman of Samaria. Especially charming is the Annunciation,
where a yellow-wigged angel, in a kind of celestial dressing-gown of
flowered brocade, advances, lily in hand, toward a gracefully-startled
Virgin, dressed (as one is told) in a costume presented by a pious lady
of Varallo. In another scene the Mother of God, habited like a peasant
of Val Sesia, looks up smilingly from the lace-cushion on which she is
at work; while the Last Supper, probably a survival of the older wooden
groups existing before Gaudenzio and his school took up the work, shows
a lace-trimmed linen table-cloth, with bread and fruit set out on real
Faenza dishes.
After these homely details the scenes of the Passion, where Gaudenzio’s
influence probably prevailed, seem a trifle academic; but even here
there are local touches, such as the curly white dog at the foot of
Herod’s throne, the rags of the beggars, the child in the Crucifixion
holding a spotted hound in leash.
The Crucifixion is fitly the culminating point of the series. Here
Gaudenzio lined the background with one of his noblest frescoes, and
the figures placed before it are worthy, in expression and attitude, to
carry out the master’s conception. The gold-bucklered Roman knight on
his white charger, the eager gaping throng, where beggars and cripples
jostle turbaned fine ladies and their dwarfs, where oval-faced Lombard
women with children at the breast press forward to catch a glimpse of
the dying Christ, while the hideous soldiers at the foot of the cross
draw lots for the seamless garment--all these crowding careless figures
bring out with strange intensity the agony uplifted in their midst.
Never, perhaps, has the popular, the unimpressed, unrepentant side of
the scene been set forth with more tragic directness. One can fancy the
gold-armoured knight echoing in after years the musing words of Anatole
France’s _Procurateur de Judée_:--“Jésus? Jésus de Nazareth? Je ne me
rappelle pas.”
* * * * *
From Varallo the fortunate traveller may carry his impressions
unimpaired through the chestnut-woods and across the hills to the lake
of Orta--a small sheet of water enclosed in richest verdure, with the
wooded island of San Giuliano on its bosom. Orta has a secret charm of
its own: a quality of solitude, of remoteness, that makes it seem the
special property of each traveller who chances to discover it. Here
too is a Sacred Way, surmounting the usual knoll above the town. The
groups have little artistic merit, but there is a solemn charm in the
tranquil glades, with their little white-pillared shrines, connected
by grass walks under a continuous vaulting of branches. The chief
“feature” of Orta, however, is the incredibly complete little island,
with its ancient church embosomed in gardens; yet even this counts only
as a detail in the general composition, a last touch to the prodigal
picturesqueness of the place. The lake itself is begirt by vine-clad
slopes, and in every direction roads and bridle-paths lead across the
wooded hills, through glades sheeted in spring-time with primroses and
lilies-of-the-valley, to the deeper forest-recesses at the foot of the
high Alps.
In any other country the departure from such perfect loveliness must
lead to an anti-climax; but there is no limit to the prodigality of the
Italian landscape, and the wanderer who turns eastward from Orta may
pass through scenes of undiminished beauty till, toward sunset, the
hills divide to show Lake Maggiore at his feet, with the Isola Bella
moored like a fantastic pleasure-craft upon its waters.
WHAT THE HERMITS SAW
In almost every gallery of Italy there hangs, among the pictures of
the earlier period, one which represents, with loving minuteness of
topographical detail, a rocky mountain-side honeycombed with caves and
inhabited by hermits.
As a rule, the landscape is comprehensive enough to include the whole
Thebaid, with the river at the base of the cliff, the _selva oscura_
“fledging the wild-ridged mountain steep by steep,” and the various
little edifices--huts, chapels and bridges--with which the colony
of anchorites have humanized their wild domain. This presentment of
the life of the solitaries always remained a favourite subject in
Italian art, and even in the rococo period, when piety had become
a drawing-room accomplishment, the traditional charm of the “life
apart” was commemorated by the mock “hermitages” to be found in every
nobleman’s park, or by such frescoes as adorn the entrance to the
chapel of the Villa Chigi, near Rome: a tiny room painted to represent
a rocky cleft in the mountains, with anchorites visiting each other in
their caves, or engaged in the duties of their sylvan existence.
A vast body of literature--and of a literature peculiarly accessible
to the people--has kept alive in Catholic countries the image of the
early solitary. The Golden Legend, the great Bollandist compilations,
and many other collections of pious anecdote, preserve, in simple
and almost childish form, the names and deeds of the desert saints.
In the traditions of the Latin race there still lingers, no doubt, a
sub-conscious memory of the dark days when all that was gentle and
merciful and humane turned to the desert to escape the desolation of
the country and the foulness of the town. From war and slavery and
famine, from the strife of the circus factions and the incredible
vices and treacheries of civilized life, the disenchanted Christian,
aghast at the more than pagan corruption of a converted world, fled
into the waste places to wear out his life in penance. The horrors he
left behind surpassed anything the desert could show--surpassed even
the terrors that walked by night, the airy tongues that syllabled
men’s names, the lemurs, succubi and painted demons of the tombs.
Nevertheless the lives of the early anchorites, who took refuge in
the burning solitudes of Egypt and Asia Minor, were full of fears and
anguish. Their history echoes with the groans and lamentations of souls
in pain, and had their lives been recorded by contemporary artists, the
presentment must have recalled those horribly circumstantial studies of
everlasting torment which admonished the mediæval worshipper from the
walls of every church.
But when Italian art began to chronicle the history of the desert
fathers, a change had passed over the spirit of Christianity. If
the world was still a dark place, full of fears and evil, solitary
communion with God had ceased to become a more dreadful alternative;
and when men went forth into the desert they found Christ there rather
than the devil. So at least one infers from the spirit in which the
Italian painters rendered the life of the Thebaid--transposing its
scenes from the parched African desert to their own fertile landscape,
and infusing into the lives of the desert fathers that sense of human
fellowship with which Saint Francis had penetrated the mediæval
conception of Christianity. The first hermits shunned each other as
they shunned the image of evil; every human relation was a snare,
and they sought each other out only in moments of moral or physical
extremity, when flesh or spirit quailed before the hallucinations of
solitude. But in the Italian pictures the hermits move in an atmosphere
of fraternal tenderness. Though they still lead the “life apart,” it is
shorn of its grimness and mitigated by acts of friendly ministry and
innocent childlike intercourse. The solitaries still dwell in remote
inaccessible regions, and for the most part their lives are spent
alone; but on the feasts of the Church they visit each other, and when
they go on pilgrimage they pause at each other’s thresholds.
Yet, though one feels that this new spirit has tamed the desert,
and transplanted to it enough of the leaven of human intercourse to
exorcise its evil spirits, the imagination remains chiefly struck by
the strangeness of the conditions in which these voluntary exiles must
have found themselves. The hermits brought little with them from the
world of cities and men compared to what they found in the wilderness.
Their relation to the earth--their ancient mysterious mother--must
have been the most intimate as well as the most interesting part of
their lives; as a “return to nature” the experience had a freshness
and intensity which the modern seeker after primeval sensations can
never hope to recover. For in those days, when distances were measured
by the pilgrim’s sandal or the ass’s hoof, a few miles meant exile,
and the mountain visible from the walls of his native town offered
the solitary as complete an isolation as the slopes of Lebanon. News
travelled at the same pace, when it did not drop by the way. There was
little security outside the city walls, and small incentive for the
traveller, except from devotional motives, to seek out the anchorite on
his inaccessible height.