Ex Voto

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In connection with this chapel both Fassola and Torrotti say that
D'Enrico has intentionally made Christ's face become smaller and
smaller during each of these last scenes, as becoming contracted
through increase of suffering. I have been unable to see that this
is more than fancy on their parts.

It is also in connection with this chapel that we discover the true
date of Fassola's book. He says that they had been on the lookout
"during the whole OF LAST YEAR"--which he gives as 1669--for some one
to finish the frescoes. "Now, however," he continues, "when this
book is seeing light," &c. The book therefore should be seeing light
in 1670. It is dated 1671. True, Fassola may have been writing at
the very end of 1670, and the book may have been published at the
beginning of 1671, but perhaps the more natural conclusion is that
the same reasons which make publishers wish to misdate their books by
a year now, made them wish to do so then, and that though Fassola's
book appeared at the end of 1670, as would appear from his own words,
it was nevertheless dated 1671.

CHAPEL No. 30. THE FLAGELLATION.

Torrotti and Fassola say that the Christ in this chapel, as well as
in all the others, is an actual portrait--and no doubt an admirable
one--communicated by Divine inspiration to the many workmen and
artists who worked on the Sacro Monte. This, they say, may be known
from two documents contemporaneous with Christ Himself, in which His
personal appearance is fully set forth, and which seem almost to have
been written from the statues now existing at Varallo. The worthy
artists who made these statues were by no means given to historical
investigations, and were little likely to know anything about the
letters in question; besides, these had only just been discovered, so
that there can have been no deception or illusion. Both Fassola and
Torrotti give the letters in full, and to their pages the reader who
wishes to see them may be referred. Fassola writes:-

"Hora vegga ogni diuoto se rassomigliando queste statue al vero
Christo essendo lauorate accidentalmente, parendo da Dio sia dato
alli Statuarij, e Pittori il lume della sua Diuina Persona non si ha
se non per mera sua disposizione e diachiarazione d'hauer quiui quasi
come rinouata, e resa piu commoda alla Christianita la sua
Redenzione" (p. 103).

The work is mentioned as completed in the 1586 edition of Caccia--
this, and the Crowning with Thorns, being the only two that are
described as completed of those that now form part of the Palazzo di
Pilato block. These two chapels do not in reality, however, belong
to the Palazzo di Pilato at all; they existed long before it, and the
new work was added on to them. Bordiga says that "an order of
Monsignor Bescape relating to this chapel, and dated February 1,
1605, shows that there was as yet no plan of this part of the Palace
of Pilate." I have not seen this order, and can only speak with
diffidence, but I do not think the chapel has been much modified
since 1586, beyond the fact that Rocca, whom we have already met with
as painting in the Caiaphas chapel in 1642, at some time or another
painted a new background, which is now much injured by damp.

Not only does the author of the 1586 Caccia mention the chapel, but
he does it with more effusion than is usual with him. He rarely says
anything in praise of any but the best work. I do not, therefore,
think it likely that his words refer to the original wooden figures,
two of which were preserved when the work was remodelled; these two
mar the chapel now, and when all the work was of the same calibre it
cannot have kindled any enthusiasm in a writer who appears to have
known very fairly well which were the best chapels. He says:-

"Da manigoldi, in atto acerbo e fiero,
Alla colonna Christo flagellato
Da scultor dotto assimigliato al vero
Di questo {13} in un de i lati e dimostrato,

E come fusse macerato e nero,
D'aspri flagelli percosso, e vergato,
Di Christo il sacro corpo in ogni parte,
Vi ha sculto dotto mastro in sottil arte."

I think the reconstruction of the chapel, then, and its assumption of
its present state, except that a fresco background was added, should
be assigned to some year about 1580-1585, and am disposed to ascribe,
at any rate, the figure of the man who is binding Christ to the
column to Tabachetti, who was then working on the Sacro Monte, and
whose style the work seems to me to resemble more nearly than it does
that of D'Enrico. Whoever the chapel is by, it was evidently in its
present place and much admired in 1586; there could hardly,
therefore, have been any occasion to reconstruct it, especially when
so much other work was crying to be done, and when it had, in all
probability, been once reconstructed already.

On the whole, until external evidence shows D'Enrico to have done the
figures, I shall continue to think that at least one of them, and
very possibly all except the two old wooden ones, are by Tabachetti.
The foot of the man binding Christ to the column has crumbled away,
either because the clay was bad, or from insufficient baking. This
is why the figure is propped up with a piece of wood. The damp has
made the rope slack, so that the pulling action of the figure is in
great measure destroyed, its effect being cancelled by its
ineffectualness; but for this the reader will easily make due
allowance. The same man reappears presently in the balcony of the
Ecce Homo chapel, but he is there evidently done by another and much
less vigorous hand.

The man in the foreground, who is stooping down and binding his rods,
is the same as the one who is kicking Christ in Tabachetti's Journey
to Calvary, and is one of those adopted by Tabachetti from Gaudenzio
Ferrari's Crucifixion chapel; this figure may perhaps have been an
addition by Giovanni D'Enrico, or have been done by an assistant, for
it is hardly up to Tabachetti's mark. The two nearest scourgers are
fine powerful figures, but I should admit that they remind me rather
of D'Enrico than of Tabachetti, though they might also be very well
by him, and probably are so.

Fassola says that the graces obtainable by the faithful here have
relation to every kind of need; they are in a high degree
unspecialised, and that this freedom from specialisation is
characteristic of all the chapels of the Passion.

CHAPEL No. 31. THE CROWNING WITH THORNS.

Much that was said about the preceding chapel applies also to this.
It is mentioned in the 1586 edition of Caccia as done "sottilmente in
natural ritratto," and as being one of the few works that would form
part of the Palazzo di Pilato block that were as yet completed.

That this chapel had undergone one reconstruction before 1586, we may
gather from the fact that the left-hand wall is still covered with a
fresco of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise; this has no
connection with the Crowning with Thorns, and doubtless formed the
background to the original Adam and Eve. I have already said that I
am indebted to Signor Arienta for this suggestion. Bordiga calls
this subject Christ being Led to be Crowned, and gives it to Crespi
da Cerano, but I cannot understand how he can see in the work
anything but an Expulsion from Paradise. The chapel having been
reconstructed before 1586 on its present site--as it evidently had
been--and being admired, is not likely to have been reconstructed a
second time, and I am again, therefore, inclined to give the whole
work, or at any rate the greater part of it, to Tabachetti, and to
reject the statements of Fassola, Torrotti, Bordiga, and Cusa, who
all ascribe the figures to D'Enrico. The two men standing up behind
Christ, one taunting Him, and the other laughing, are among the
finest on the Sacro Monte, and are much more in Tabachetti's manner
than in D'Enrico's. The other figures are, as they were doubtless
intended to be, of minor interest.

Some of the frescoes other than those above referred to, were added
at a later date, and are said by Bordiga, on the authority of a
covenant, dated September 27th, 1608, to have been done by Antonio
Rantio, who undertook to paint them for a sum of ten ducatoons. They
are without interest.

It was here the Flemish dancer was healed.

His name was Bartholomew Jacob, and he came from Graveling in
Flanders. It seems there was a ball going on at the house of one of
this man's ancestors, and that the Last Sacraments were being carried
through the street under the windows of the ball-room.

The dancing ought by rights to have been stopped, but the host
refused to stop it, and presently the priest who was carrying the
Sacrament found a paper under the chalice, written in a handwriting
of almost superhuman neatness, presumably that of the Madonna herself
and bearing the words, "Dancer, thou wouldst not stay thy dance: I
curse thee, therefore, that thou dance for nine generations." And so
he did, he and all his descendants all their lives, till it came to
Bartholomew Jacob, who was the ninth in descent. He too began life
dancing, and was still dancing when he started on a pilgrimage to
Rome; when, however, he got to the Sacro Monte at Varallo on the 7th
of January 1646, he began to feel tired, tremulous, and languid from
so much incessant movement. This strange feeling attacked him first
at the Nativity Chapel, but by the time he got to the Crowning with
Thorns he could stand it no longer, and fell as one dead, to rise
again presently perfectly whole, and relieved of his distressing
complaint.

Personally I find this story interesting as giving high support to
the theory I have been trying to insist upon for some years past, and
according to which in a certain sense a man is personally identical
with all the generations in the direct line both of his ancestry and
his descendants, as well as with himself. The words "Thou shalt
dance for nine generations" involve one of the most important points
contended for in my earlier book, "Life and Habit." Fassola and
Torrotti both say that more pilgrims left alms at this chapel than at
any other. In fact they both seem to consider that this chapel did
very well. "Qui," says Torrotti, "si colgano elemosine assai," and,
as I have said already, it is here that a few autumn leaves of waxen
images still linger.

A few weeks ago I saw the original document in which the story above
given was attested. It was dated 1671, and signed, stamped, and
sealed as a document of the highest importance. I noticed that in
this manuscript, it was a voice that was heard, and not as in Fassola
a letter that was found.

CHAPEL No 32. CHRIST AT THE STEPS OF THE PRETORIUM.

This is not mentioned in the 1586 edition of Caccia, perhaps as being
a poor and unimportant work. Fassola says that some of the frescoes,
as well as of the statues, which, he says, are of wood, were by
Gaudenzio. The other statues are given both by Fassola and Torrotti
to D'Enrico, and the paintings to Gianoli, a wealthy Valsesian
amateur who lived at Campertogno. Bordiga gives the statues to
Ferro, already mentioned as a pupil of D'Enrico, but whoever did
them, they are about as bad as they can be--too bad, I should say,
for Giacomo Ferro, and I am not sure that they are not of wood even
now. No traces of Gaudenzio's frescoes remain. The chapel seems to
have been reconstructed in connection with the replica of the Scala
Santa up which Christ is going to be conducted. We have seen that
the design for these stairs was procured from Rome in 1608 by
Francesco Testa, who was then Fabbriciere.

CHAPEL No 33. ECCE HOMO.

This is one of the finest chapels, the concert between the figures
being better than in most of D'Enrico's other work, notwithstanding
the fact that more than one, and probably several, are old figures
taken from chapels that were displaced when the Palazzo di Pilato
block was made. The figures are thirty-seven in number, and are
disposed in a spacious hall not wholly unlike the vestibule of the
Reform Club, Christ and His immediate persecutors appearing in a
balustraded balcony above a spacious portico that supports it. This
must have been one of D'Enrico's first works on the Sacro Monte, the
frescoes having been paid for on Dec. 7, 1612, as shown by
Morazzone's receipt which is still in existence, and which is for the
sum of 2400 imperiali. Of these frescoes it is impossible to speak
highly; they look clever at first and from a distance, but do not
bear closer attention. Morazzone took pains with the Journey to
Calvary chapel, which was his first work on the Sacro Monte, but
never did anything so good again.

Of the terra-cotta figures, the one to the extreme left is certainly
by Gaudenzio Ferrari, being another portrait, in nearly the same
attitude, of the extreme figure to the left in the Crucifixion
chapel. For reasons into which I will enter more fully when I come
to this last-named work, I do not doubt that Stefano Scotto,
Gaudenzio's master, is the person represented. I had to go inside
the chapel to hold a sheet behind the figure in order to detach it
from the background, so had myself taken along with it to show how it
compares with a living figure. It is generally said at Varallo to be
a portrait of Giovanno D'Enrico's brother Tanzio, but this is
obviously impossible, for not only does the same person reappear in
the Crucifixion chapel, but he is also found in Gaudenzio's early
fresco of the Disputa in the Sta. Margherita chapel already referred
to, and elsewhere, as I will presently show. I should be sorry to
say that any other figure in the Ecce Homo chapel except this is
certainly by Gaudenzio, but am inclined to think that two or three
others are also by him, the rest being probably all of them by
D'Enrico or some assistant. Some--more especially two children, on
the head of one of whom a man has laid his hand--are of extreme
beauty. The child that is looking up is among the most beautiful in
the whole range of sculpture; the other is not so good, but has
suffered in re-painting, the eyelid being made too red; if this were
remedied, as it easily might be, the figure would gain greatly. Cav.
Prof. Antonini has very successfully substituted plaster hair for the
horsehair, which had in great measure fallen off. The motive of this
incidental group is repeated, but with less success, in Giovanni
D'Enrico's Nailing to the Cross.

There is another child to the extreme right of the composition so
commonly and poorly done that it is hard to believe it can be by the
same hand, but it is not likely that Giacomo Ferro had as yet become
D'Enrico's assistant. The man who is pointing out Christ to this
last-named child is far more seriously treated, and might even be an
importation from an earlier work. Among other very fine figures is a
man who is looking up and holding a staff in his hand; he stands
against the wall to the spectator's right among the figures nearest
to the grating. There is also an admirable figure of a man on one
knee tying his cross garter and at the same time looking up. This
figure is in the background rather hidden away, and is not very well
seen from the grating. I should add that the floor of the chapel
slopes a little up from the spectator like the stage in a theatre.

The dog in the middle foreground is hollow, as are all the figures,
or at any rate many of them, and shows a great hole on the side away
from the spectator; it is not fixed to the ground, but stands on its
own legs; it was as much as I could do to lift it. I am told the
figures were baked down below in the town, and though they are most
of them in several pieces it must have been no light work carrying
them up the mountain. I have been shown the remains of a furnace
near the present church on the Sacro Monte, but believe it was only
used for the figures made by Luigi Marchesi in 1826. I should,
however, have thought that the figures would have been baked upon the
Sacro Monte itself and not in the town.

Of this chapel Fassola says:-

"All the pilgrims of every description come here, because it is at
the top of the Scala Santa up which they go upon their knees, and
there is plenty of room for pilgrims, as the chapel extends the whole
width of the staircase. Those who are oppressed with travail, or
fevers, or lawsuits, or unjust persecutions of any description, are
comforted on being commended to this Christ." "Vi sono qui," says
Torrotti, "pascoli deliziosi per i curiosi e piu dotti."

I daresay that on the great festivals of the Church, some pilgrims
may still go up the Scala Santa kneeling, but they do not commonly do
so. Often as I have been at the Sacro Monte, I never yet saw a
pilgrim mount the staircase except on his feet in the usual way. It
must be a very painful difficult thing to go up twenty-eight
consecutive high steps on one's knees; I tried it, but gave it up
after a very few steps, and do not recommend any of my readers to
even do as much as this.

CHAPEL No. 34. PILATE WASHING HIS HANDS.

Fassola, Torrotti, and Bordiga all call this one of the best chapels,
but neither Jones nor I could see that it was nearly so successful as
the preceding. The seventeen modelled figures are by Giovanni
D'Enrico, and the frescoes by his brother Antonio or Tanzio. One or
two of the figures--especially a man putting his finger to his mouth
derisively, are excellent, but the Pilate is a complete failure; and
it is hard to think it can have been done, as it probably
nevertheless was, by the sculptor of the Caiaphas and Herod figures.
Bordiga says that a contract was made with Caccia (not the
historian), called Moncalvo, for the frescoes. This was the painter
who did the backgrounds for the Crea chapels, but the contract was
never carried out, probably because Antonio D'Enrico returned from
Rome. It was dated November 1616, so that the terra-cotta figures
probably belong to this year or to those that immediately preceded
it.

CHAPEL No. 35. CHRIST CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

This is better than the preceding chapel, and contains some good
individual figures. The statues are twenty-seven in number, and were
modelled by D'Enrico prior to the year 1614, in which year Morazzone
was paid twelve hundred imperiali for having painted the frescoes, so
that it was one of his earlier works, but the Pilate is again a
failure. People who have been badly treated, and who have suffered
from some injustice, are more especially recommended by Fassola "to
try this Christ, who moves the pity of all who look upon Him."

He continues that it was the intention to add some other chapels at
the end of the portico of the Palazzo di Pilato, but this intention
was not carried out. Bordiga calls attention to the view on the
right, looking over Varallo and the Mastallone, as soon as the
portico is passed.

CHAPTER XIII. MYSTERIES OF THE PASSION AND DEATH.

The Palazzo di Pilato is now ended, and we begin with the mysteries
of the Passion and Death of the Redeemer, the first of which is set
forth in

CHAPEL No. 36. THE JOURNEY TO CALVARY.

This, having regard to the terra-cotta figures alone, is by far the
finest work on the Sacro Monte, and it is hardly too much to say that
no one who has not seen it knows what sculpture can do. I have
sufficiently shown that all the authorities, not one of whom has ever
so much as seen a page of Caccia, are wrong by at least twenty years,
when they say that Tabachetti completed the work in 1606. Bordiga
refers, and this time I have no doubt accurately, to a deed drawn up
in 1602, in accordance with which the fresco background was begun by
Antonio Gandino, a painter of Brescia; this alone should have made
Bordiga suspect that the terra-cotta work had been already completed,
but he does not appear to have noted the fact, and goes on to say
that the agreement with Gandino was cancelled by Bishop Bescape in
1604, and that his work was destroyed, the chapel being handed over
to Morazzone, who painted it in 1605, and was paid 1400 lire, besides
twenty gold scudi. Morazzone has followed Gaudenzio boldly,
repeating several of his fresco figures, as Tabachetti, with
admirable good taste, had repeated several of his terra-cotta ones,
while completely varying the action. The right-hand frescoes, and
part of those on the wall opposite the spectator, have been recently
cut away in squares, and relined, as the wall was perishing from
damp.

The statues consist of about forty figures of men, women, and
children, and nine horses, all rather larger than life. They too
have suffered from the effect of damp upon the paint; nevertheless, a
more permanent and satisfactory kind of pigment has been used here
than in most of the chapels; the work does not seem to have been
much, if at all repainted, since Tabachetti left it. One figure of a
child in the foreground has disappeared, the marks of its feet and
two little bits of rusty iron alone show where it was; the woman who
was holding it also remains without an arm. I am tempted to think
that some disturbing cause has affected a girl who is holding a
puppy, a little to the right of this last figure, and doubt whether
something that accompanied her may not have perished; at any rate, it
does not group with the other figures as well as these do with one
another; this, however, is a very small blemish. The work is one
that will grow upon the reader the more he studies it, and should
rank as the most successfully ambitious of medieval compositions in
sculpture, no less surely than Gaudenzio's Crucifixion chapel, having
regard to grandeur of scheme as well as execution, should rank as the
most daring among Italian works of art in general. I am aware that
this must strike many of my readers as in all probability a very
exaggerated estimate, but can only repeat that I have studied these
works for the last twenty years with every desire not to let a false
impression run away with me, and that each successive visit to
Varallo, while tending somewhat to lower my estimate of Giovanni
D'Enrico--unless when he is at his very best--has increased my
admiration for both Gaudenzio Ferrari and Tabachetti, as also, I
would add, for the sculptor of the Massacre of the Innocents chapel.

It cannot, indeed, be pretended that Tabachetti's style is as pure as
that of his great predecessor, but what it has lost in purity it has
gained in freedom and vigour. It is not possible that an artist
working in the years 1580-1585 should present to us traces of the
archaism which even the most advanced sculptors of half a century
earlier had not wholly lost. The stronger a man is the more
certainly will he be modified by his own times as well as modify
them, and in an age of barocco we must not look for Donatellos.
Still, the more Tabachetti's work is examined the more will it be
observed that he took no harm from the barocco, but kept its freedom
while avoiding its coarseness and exaggeration. For reasons
explained in an earlier chapter his figures are not generally
portraits, but he is eminently realistic, and if he did the
Vecchietto, of which I have given a photograph at the beginning of
this book, he must be credited with one of the most living figures
that have ever been made--a figure which rides on the very highest
crest of the wave, and neither admits possibility of further advance
towards realism without defeating its own purpose, nor shows even the
slightest sign of decadence. Of the figure of the Countess of
Serravalle, to which I have already referred, Torrotti said it was so
much admired in his day that certain Venetian cavaliers offered to
buy it for its weight in gold, but that the mere consideration of
such an offer would be high treason (lesa Maesta) to the Sacro Monte.
Fassola and Torrotti, as well as Bordiga and Cusa, are evidently
alive to the fact that as far as sculpture goes we have here the
highest triumph attained on the Sacro Monte of Varallo.

I had better perhaps give the words in which Caccia describes the
work. In the 1586 edition, we read, in the preliminary prose part,
as follows:-

"Come N. S. e condotto alla morte con la croce alle spalle, qual si
vede tutto di rilievo."

The poetical account runs thus:-

"Si trova poi in una Chiesa nera
Con spettacolo fiero accompagnato
Da soldati, e da gente molto fiera,
Con la Croce alle spalle incaminato
Christo Giesu in mezzo a l'empia schiera,
Seguendolo Giovanni addolorato,
Che di Giesu sostien la sconsolata
Madre, da Maddalena accompagnata."

In the 1591 edition, the prose description of the work runs; -

"Come N. S. e condotto alla morte con la Croce sopra delle spalle,
quali si vedeno tutto di rilieuo bellissi."

I have no copy of the poetical part of this edition before me, but
believe it to be identical with the version already given. The
impression left upon me is that the work in 1586 was only just
finished enough to allow it to be called finished, and that its full
excellence was not yet displayed to the public, though it was about
to be so very shortly.

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