Ex Voto

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EX VOTO: AN ACCOUNT OF THE SACRO MONTE OR NEW JERUSALEM AT VARALLO-
SESIA WITH SOME NOTICE OF TABACHETTI'S REMAINING WORK AT THE
SANCTUARY OF CREA

PREFACE.

The illustrations to this book are mainly collotype photographs by
Messrs. Maclure, Macdonald & Co., of Glasgow. Notwithstanding all
their care, it cannot be pretended that the result is equal to what
would have been obtained from photogravure; I found, however, that to
give anything like an adequate number of photogravures would have
made the book so expensive that I was reluctantly compelled to
abandon the idea.

As these sheets leave my hands, my attention is called to a pleasant
article by Miss Alice Greene about Varallo, that appeared in The
Queen for Saturday, April 21, 1888. The article is very nicely
illustrated, and gives a good idea of the place. Of the Sacro Monte
Miss Greene says: --"On the Sacro Monte the tableaux are produced in
perpetuity, only the figures are not living, they are terra-cotta
statues painted and moulded in so life-like a way that you feel that,
were a man of flesh and blood to get mixed up with the crowd behind
the grating, you would have hard work to distinguish him from the
figures that have never had life."

I should wish to modify in some respects the conclusion arrived at on
pp. 148, 149, about Michael Angelo Rossetti's having been the
principal sculptor of the Massacre of the Innocents chapel. There
can be no doubt that Rossetti did the figure which he has signed, and
several others in the chapel. One of those which are probably by him
(the soldier with outstretched arm to the left of the composition)
appears in the view of the chapel that I have given to face page 144,
but on consideration I incline against the supposition of my text,
i.e., that the signature should be taken as governing the whole work,
or at any rate the greater part of it, and lean towards accepting the
external authority, which, quantum valeat, is all in favour of
Paracca. I have changed my mind through an increasing inability to
resist the opinion of those who hold that the figures fall into two
main groups, one by the man who did the signed figure, i.e., Michael
Angelo Rossetti; and another, comprising all the most vigorous,
interesting, and best placed figures, that certainly appears to be by
a much more powerful hand. Probably, then, Rossetti finished
Paracca's work and signed one figure as he did, without any idea of
claiming the whole, and believing that Paracca's predominant share
was too well known to make mistake about the authorship of the work
possible. I have therefore in the title to the illustration given
the work to Paracca, but it must be admitted that the question is one
of great difficulty, and I can only hope that some other work of
Paracca's may be found which will tend to settle it. I will
thankfully receive information about any other such work.

May 1, 1888.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

Unable to go to Dinant before I published "Ex Voto," I have since
been there, and have found out a good deal about Tabachetti's family.
His real name was de Wespin, and he tame of a family who had been
Copper-beaters, and hence sculptors--for the Flemish copper-beaters
made their own models--for many generations. The family seems to
have been the most numerous and important in Dinant.

The sculptor's grandfather, Perpete de Wespin, was the first to take
the sobriquet of Tabaguet, and though in the deeds which I have seen
at Namur the name is always given as "de Wespin," yet the addition of
"dit Tabaguet" shows that this last was the name in current use. His
father and mother, and a sister Jacquelinne, under age, appear to
have all died in 1587. Jean de Wespin, the sculptor, is mentioned in
a deed of that date as "expatrie," and he has a "gardien" or
"tuteur," who is to take charge of his inheritance, appointed by the
Court, as though he were for some reason unable to appoint one for
himself. This lends colour to Fassola's and Torrotti's statement
that he lost his reason about 1586 or 1587. I think it more likely,
however, considering that he was alive and doing admirable work some
fifty years after 1590, that he was the victim of some intrigue than
that he was ever really mad. At any rate, about 1587 he appears to
have been unable to act for himself.

If his sister Jacquelinne died under age in 1587, Jean is not likely
to have been then much more than thirty, so we may conclude that he
was born about 1560. There is some six or eight years' work by him
remaining at Varallo, and described as finished in the 1586 edition
of Caccia. Tabachetti, therefore, must have left home very young,
and probably went straight to Varallo. In 1586 or 1587 we lose sight
of him till 1590 or 1591, when he went to Crea, where he did about
forty chapels--almost all of which have perished.

On again visiting Milan I found in the Biblioteca Nazionale a guide-
book to the Sacro Monte, which was not in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
and of whose existence I had never heard. This guide-book was
published in 1606 and reissued in 1610; it mentions all changes since
1590, and even describes chapels not yet in existence, but it says
nothing about Tabachetti's First Vision of St. Joseph chapel--the
only one of his chapels not given as completed in the 1590 edition of
Caccia. I had assumed too hastily that this chapel was done just
after the 1590 edition of Caccia had been published, and just before
Tabachetti left for Crea in 1590 or 1591, whereas it now appears that
it was done about 1610, during a short visit paid by the sculptor to
Varallo some twenty years after he had left it.

Finding that Tabachetti returned to Varallo about 1610, I was able to
understand two or three figures in the Ecce Homo chapel which I had
long thought must be by Tabachetti, but had not ventured to ascribe
to him, inasmuch as I believed him to have finally left Varallo some
twenty years before the Ecce Homo chapel was made. I have now no
doubt that he lent a hand to Giovanni D'Enrico with this chapel, in
which he has happily left us his portrait signed with a V (doubtless
standing for W, a letter which the Italians have not got), cut on the
hat before baking, and invisible from outside the chapel.

Signor Arienta had told me there was a seal on the back of a figure
in the Journey to Calvary chapel; on examining this I found it to
show a W, with some kind of armorial bearings underneath. I have not
been able to find anything like these arms, of which I give a sketch
herewith: they have no affinity with those of the de Wespin family,
unless the cups with crosses under them are taken as modifications of
the three-footed caldrons which were never absent from the arms of
Dinant copper-beaters. Tabachetti (for I shall assume that the seal
was placed by him) perhaps sealed this figure as an afterthought in
1610, being unable to cut easily into the hard-baked clay, and if he
could have Italianised the W he would probably have done so. I
should say that I arrived at the Ecce Homo figure as a portrait of
Tabachetti before I found the V cut upon the hat; I found the V on
examining the portrait to see if I could find any signature. It
stands next to a second portrait of Leonardo da Vinci by Gaudenzio
Ferrari, taken into the Ecce Homo chapel, doubtless, on the
demolition of some earlier work by Gaudenzio on or near the same
site. I knew of this second portrait of Leonardo da Vinci when I
published my first edition, but did not venture to say anything about
it, as thinking that one life-sized portrait of a Leonardo da Vinci
by a Gaudenzio Ferrari was as much of a find at one time as my
readers would put up with. I had also known of the V on Tabachetti's
hat, but, having no idea that his name was de Wespin, had not seen
why this should help it to be a portrait of Tabachetti, and had
allowed the fact to escape me.

The figure next to Scotto in the Ecce Homo chapel is, I do not doubt,
a portrait of Giovanni D'Enrico. This may explain the tradition at
Varallo that Scotto is Antonio D'Enrico, which cannot be. Next to
Giovanni D'Enrico stands the second Leonardo da Vinci, and next to
Leonardo, as I have said, Tabachetti. In the chapel by Gaudenzio,
from which they were taken, the figures of Leonardo and Scotto
probably stood side by side as they still do in the Crucifixion
chapel. I supposed that Tabachetti and D'Enrico, who must have
perfectly well known who they were, separated them in order to get
Giovanni D'Enrico nearer the grating. It was the presumption that we
had D'Enrico's portrait between Scotto and Leonardo, and the
conviction that Tabachetti also had worked in the chapel, that led me
to examine the very beautiful figure on the father side of Leonardo
to see if I could find anything to confirm my suspicion that it was a
portrait of Tabachetti himself.

I do not think there can be much doubt that the Vecchietto is also a
portrait of Tabachetti done some thirty years later than 1610, nor
yet do I doubt, now I know that he returned to Varallo in 1610, that
the figures of Herod and of Caiaphas are by him. I believe he also
at this time paid a short visit to Orta, and did three or four
figures in the left hand part of the foreground of the Canonisation
of St. Francis chapel. At Montrigone, a mile or so below Borgo-Sesia
station, I believe him to have done at least two or three figures,
which are very much in his manner, and not at all like either Giacomo
Ferro or Giovanni D'Enrico, to whom they are usually assigned. These
figures are some twenty-five years later than 1610, and tend to show
that Tabachetti, as an old man of over seventy, paid a third visit to
the Val-Sesia.

The substance of the foregoing paragraphs is published at greater
length, and with illustrations, in the number of the Universal Review
for November 1888, and to which I must refer my readers. I have,
however, here given the pith of all that I have yet been able to find
out about Tabachetti since "Ex Voto" was published. I should like to
add the following in regard to other chapels.

Signor Arienta has found a 1523 scrawled on the frescoes of the
Crucifixion chapel. I do not think this shows necessarily that the
work was more than begun at that date. He has also found a monogram,
which we believe to be Gaudenzio Ferrari's, on the central shield
with a lion on it, given in the illustration facing p. 210. On
further consideration, I feel more and more inclined to think that
the frescoes in this chapel have been a good deal retouched.

I hardly question that the Second Vision of St. Joseph chapel is by
Tabachetti, as also the Woman of Samaria. The Christ in this last
chapel is a restoration. In a woodcut of 1640 the position of the
figures is reversed, but nothing more than the positions.

Lastly, the Virgin's mother does not have eggs east of Milan. It is
a Valsesian custom to give eggs beaten up with wine and sugar to
women immediately on their confinement, and I am told that the eggs
do no harm though not according to the rules. I am told that
Valsesian influence must always be suspected when the Virgin's mother
is having eggs.

November 30, 1888.

Note.--A copy of this postscript can be easily inserted into a bound
copy, and will be forwarded by Messrs. TRUBNER & Co. on receipt of
stamped and addressed envelope.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

In the preface to "Alps and Sanctuaries" I apologised for passing
over Varallo-Sesia, the most important of North Italian sanctuaries,
on the ground that it required a book to itself. This book I will
now endeavour to supply, though well aware that I can only
imperfectly and unworthily do so. To treat the subject in the detail
it merits would be a task beyond my opportunities; for, in spite of
every endeavour, I have not been able to see several works and
documents, without which it is useless to try and unravel the earlier
history of the sanctuary. The book by Caccia, for example, published
by Sessali at Novara in 1565, and reprinted at Brescia in 1576, is
sure to turn up some day, but I have failed to find it at Varallo,
Novara (where it appears in the catalogue, but not on the shelves),
Milan, the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Bodleian Library.
Through the kindness of Sac. Ant. Ceriani, I was able to learn that
the Biblioteca Ambrosiana possessed what there can be little doubt is
a later edition of this book, dated 1587, but really published at the
end of 1586, and another dated 1591, to which Signor Galloni in his
"Uomini e fatti celebri di Valle-Sesia" (p. 110) has called attention
as the first work ever printed at Varallo. But the last eight of the
twenty-one years between 1565 and 1586 were eventful, and much could
be at once seen by a comparison of the 1565, 1576, and 1586 [1587]
editions, about which speculation is a waste of time while the
earlier works are wanting. I have been able to gather two or three
interesting facts by a comparison of the 1586 and 1591 editions, and
do not doubt that the date, for example, of Tabachetti's advent to
Varallo and of his great Calvary Chapel would be settled within a
very few years if the missing books were available.

Another document which I have in vain tried to see is the plan of the
Sacro Monte as it stood towards the close of the sixteenth century,
made by Pellegrino Tibaldi with a view to his own proposed
alterations. He who is fortunate enough to gain access to this plan-
-which I saw for a few minutes in 1884, but which is now no longer at
Varallo--will find a great deal made clear to him which he will
otherwise be hardly able to find out. Over and above the foregoing,
there is the inventory drawn up by order of Giambattista Albertino in
1614, and a number of other documents, to which reference will be
found in the pages of Bordiga, Galloni, Tonetti, and of the many
others who have written upon the Val Sesia and its history. A twelve
months' stay in the Val Sesia would not suffice to do justice to all
the interesting and important questions which arise wholesale as soon
as the chapels on the Sacro Monte are examined with any care. I
shall confine myself, therefore, to a consideration of the most
remarkable features of the Sacro Monte as it exists at present, and
to doing what I can to stimulate further study on the part of others.

I cannot understand how a field so interesting, and containing
treasures in so many respects unrivalled, can have remained almost
wholly untilled by the numerous English lovers of art who yearly
flock to Italy; but the fact is one on which I may perhaps be
congratulated, inasmuch as more shortcomings and errors of judgment
may be forgiven in my own book, in virtue of its being the first to
bring Varallo with any prominence before English readers. That
little is known about the Sacro Monte, even by the latest and best
reputed authorities on art, may be seen by turning to Sir Henry
Layard's recent edition of Kugler's "Handbook of Painting,"--a work
which our leading journals of culture have received with acclamation.
Sir Henry Layard has evidently either never been at Varallo, or has
so completely forgotten what he saw there that his visit no longer
counts. He thinks, for example, that the chapels, or, as he also
calls them, "stations" (which in itself should show that he has not
seen them), are on the way up to the Sacro Monte, whereas all that
need be considered are on the top. He thinks that the statues
generally in these supposed chapels "on the ascent of the Sacro
Monte" are attributed to Gaudenzio Ferrari, whereas it is only in two
or three out of some five-and-forty that any statues are believed to
be by Gaudenzio. He thinks the famous sculptor Tabachetti--for
famous he is in North Italy, where he is known--was a painter, and
speaks of him as "a local imitator" of Gaudenzio, who "decorated"
other chapels, and "whose works only show how rapidly Gaudenzio's
influence declined and his school deteriorated." As a matter of
fact, Tabachetti was a Fleming and his name was Tabaquet; but this is
a detail. Sir Henry Layard thinks that "Miel" was also "a local
imitator" of Gaudenzio. It is not likely that this painter ever
worked on the Sacro Monte at all; but if he did, Sir Henry Layard
should surely know that he came from Antwerp. Sir Henry Layard does
not appear to know that there are any figures in the Crucifixion
Chapel of Gaudenzio, or indeed in any of the chapels for which
Gaudenzio painted frescoes, and falls into a trap which seems almost
laid on purpose for those who would write about Varallo without
having been there, in supposing that Gaudenzio painted a Pieta on the
Sacro Monte. Having thus displayed the ripeness of his knowledge as
regards facts, he says that though the chapels "on the ascent of the
Sacro Monte" are "objects of wonder and admiration to the innumerable
pilgrims who frequent this sacred spot," yet "the bad taste of the
colour and clothing make them highly repugnant to a cultivated eye."

I begin to understand now how we came to buy the Blenheim Raffaelle.

Finally, Sir Henry Layard says it is "very doubtful" whether any of
the statues were modelled or executed by Gaudenzio Ferrari at all.
It is a pity he has not thought it necessary give a single reason or
authority in support of a statement so surprising.

Some of these blunders appear in the edition of 1874 edited by Lady
Eastlake. In that edition the writer evidently knows nothing of any
figures in the Crucifixion Chapel, and Sir Henry Layard was unable to
supply the omission. The writer in the 1874 edition says that
"Gaudenzio is seen as a modeller of painted terra-cotta in the
stations ascending to the chapel (sic) on the Sacro Monte." It is
from this source that Sir Henry Layard got his idea that the chapels
are on the way up to the Sacro Monte, and that they are distinct from
those for which Gaudenzio painted frescoes on the top of the
mountain. Having perhaps seen photographs of the Sacro Monte at
Varese, where the chapels climb the hill along with the road, or
having perhaps actually seen the Madonna del Sasso at Locarno, where
small oratories with frescoes of the Stations of the Cross are placed
on the ascent, he thought those at Varallo might as well remain on
the ascent also, and that it would be safe to call them "stations."
It is the writer in the 1874 edition who first gave him or her self
airs about a cultivated eye; but he or she had the grace to put in a
saving clause to the effect that the designs in some instances were
"full of grace." True, Sir Henry Layard has never seen the designs;
nevertheless his eye is too highly cultivated to put up with this
clause; so it has disappeared, to make room, I suppose, for the
sentence in which so much accurate knowledge is displayed in respect
to Tabachetti and Miel d'Anvers. Sir Henry Layard should keep to the
good old plan of saying that the picture would have been better if
the artist had taken more pains, and praising the works of Pietro
Perugino. Personally, I confess I am sorry he has never seen the
Sacro Monte. If he has trod on so many ploughshares without having
seen Varallo, what might he not have achieved in the plenitude of a
taste which has been cultivated in every respect save that of not
pretending to know more than one does know, if he had actually been
there, and seen some one or two of the statues themselves?

I have only sampled Sir Henry Layard's work in respect of two other
painters, but have found no less reason to differ from him there than
here. I refer to his remarks about Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. I
must reserve the counter-statement of my own opinion for another
work, in which I shall hope to deal with the real and supposed
portraits of those two great men. I will, however, take the present
opportunity of protesting against a sentence which caught my eye in
passing, and which I believe to be as fundamentally unsound as any I
ever saw written, even by a professional art critic or by a director
of a national collection. Sir Henry Layard, in his chapter on
Leonardo da Vinci, says -

"One thing prominently taught us by the works of Leonardo and
Raffaelle, of Michael Angelo and Titian, is distinctly this--that
purity of morals, freedom of institutions, and sincerity of faith
have nothing to do with excellence in art."

I should prefer to say, that if the works of the four artists above
mentioned show one thing more clearly than another, it is that
neither power over line, nor knowledge of form, nor fine sense of
colour, nor facility of invention, nor any of the marvellous gifts
which three out of the four undoubtedly possessed, will make any
man's work live permanently in our affections unless it is rooted in
sincerity of faith and in love towards God and man. More briefly, it
is [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], or the spirit, and not
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced], or the letter, which is the
soul of all true art. This, it should go without saying, applies to
music, literature, and to whatever can be done at all. If it has
been done "to the Lord"--that is to say, with sincerity and freedom
from affectation--whether with conscious effusion, as by Gaudenzio,
or with perhaps robuster unconsciousness, as by Tabachetti, a halo
will gather round it that will illumine it though it pass through the
valley of the shadow of death itself. If it has been done in self-
seeking, as, exceptis excipiendis, by Leonardo, Titian, Michael
Angelo, and Raffaelle, it will in due course lose hold and power in
proportion to the insincerity with which it was tainted.

CHAPTER II. THE REV. S. W. KING--LANZI AND LOMAZZO.

Leaving Sir Henry Layard, let us turn to one of the few English
writers who have given some attention to Varallo--I mean to the Rev.
S. W. King's delightful work "The Italian Valleys of the Pennine
Alps." This author says -

"When we first visited Varallo, it was comparatively little known to
travellers, but we now found that of late years many more had
frequented it, and its beautiful scenery and great attractions were
becoming more generally and deservedly appreciated. Independently of
its own picturesque situation, and its advantages as head-quarters
for exploring the neighbouring Vals and their romantic scenery, the
works which it possesses of the ancient and famous Val Sesian school
of painters and modellers are most interesting. At the head of them
stands first and foremost Gaudenzio Ferrari, whose original and
masterly productions ought to be far more widely known and studied
than they as yet are; and some of the finest of them are to be found
in the churches and Sacro Monte of Varallo" (p. 498).

Of the Sacro Monte the same writer says -

"No situation could have been more happily chosen for the purpose
intended than the little mountain rising on the north of Varallo to a
height of about 270 feet"--[this is an error; the floor of the church
on the Sacro Monte is just 500 feet above the bridge over the
Mastallone]--"on which the chapels, oratories, and convents of that
extraordinary creation the New Jerusalem are grouped together.
Besides the beauty of the site and its convenient proximity to a town
like Varallo of some 3000 inhabitants, the character of the mountain
is exactly adapted for the effective disposition of the various
'stations' of which it consists"--[it does not consist of
"stations"]--"and on this account chiefly it was selected by the
founder, the 'Blessed Bernardino Caimo.' A Milanese of noble family,
and Vicar of the Convent of the Minorites in Milan, and also in
connection with that of Varallo, he was specially commissioned by
Pope Sixtus IV. to visit the Sepulchre and other holy places in
Palestine, and while there took the opportunity of making copies and
drawings, with the intention of erecting a facsimile of them in his
native country. On his return to Italy in 1491, after examining all
the likely sites within reasonable distance of Milan, he found the
conical hills of the Val Sesia the best adapted for his design, and
fixed upon Varallo as the spot; being probably specially attracted to
it from the fact of the convent and church of Sta. Maria delle
Grazie, already described, having been conveyed through him to the
'Minori Osservanti,' as appears from a brief of Innocent VIII., dated
December 21, 1486."

Mr. King does not give the source from which he derived his knowledge
of the existence of this act, and I have not come across a notice of
it elsewhere, except a brief one in Signor Galloni's work (p. 71),
and a reference to it in the conveyance of April 14, 1493. But
Signor Arienta of Varallo, whose industry in collecting materials for
a history of the Sacro Monte cannot be surpassed, showed me a
transcript from an old plan of the church of S. Maria delle Grazie,
in which the inscription on Bernardino Caimi's grave was given--an
inscription which (so at least I understood Signor Arienta to say) is
now covered by an altar which had been erected on the site of the
grave. The inscription ran:-

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