EX VOTO:

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 Pietà 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 ἀγάπη, or the spirit, and not γνώσις, 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.

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:—

“Hic quiescunt ossa B. Bernardini Caimis Mediolan.  S. Montis Varalli Fundatoris An. 1486.  Pontif. Dipl sub die 21 Xbris.  Mortuus est autem in hoc coenobio An. Vulg. Æræ 1499.”

It would thus appear that the Sacro Monte was founded four years earlier than the received date.  The formal deed of conveyance of the site on the mountain from the town to Bernardino Caimi was not signed till the 14th of April 1493; but the work had been already commenced, as is shown by the inscription still remaining over the reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre, which is dated the 17th of October 1491.  Probably the work was contemplated in 1486, and interrupted by B. Caimi’s return to Jerusalem in 1487, not to be actively resumed till 1490.

“The first stone,” says Mr. King, “was laid by Scarognini, a Milanese ‘magnifico,’ who cordially entered into the scheme; and at his expense the Holy Sepulchre was completed, and a hospice attached, where the founder and a number of Franciscan brothers came to reside in 1493.  Caimo had planned a vast extension of this commencement, but died within three years, leaving his designs to be carried out by his successors.”

. . . . .

“Each oratory contains a group—in some very numerous—of figures modelled in terra-cotta the size of life or larger; many of them of great merit as works of art, others very inferior and mere rubbish.  The figures are coloured and occasionally draped with appropriate clothing, the resemblance to life being heightened by the addition of human hair”—[which, by the way, is always horse-hair]—“and the effect is often very startling.  Each chapel represents a different ‘mystery,’ and, beside the modelled figures, the walls are decorated with frescoes.  The front of each is open to the air, all but a wire grating, through apertures in which the subject may be perfectly seen in the position intended by the designer” (pp. 510–512).

Mr. King says, correctly, that Gaudenzio’s earliest remaining work on the Sacro Monte is the Chapel of the Pietà, that originally contained the figures of Christ bearing the cross, but from which the modelled figures were removed, others being substituted that had no connection with the background.  I do not know, however, that Christ was actually carrying the cross in the chapel as it originally stood.  The words of the 1587 edition of Caccia (?) stand, “Come il N.S. fu spogliato de suoi panni, e condotto sopra il Monte Calvario, ch’ e fatto di bellissimo e ben inteso relievo.”

“The frescoes on the wall,” he continues, “are particularly interesting, as having been painted by him at the early age of nineteen”—[Mr. King supposes Gaudenzio Ferrari to have been born in 1484]—“when his ambition to share in the glory and renown of the great work was gratified by this chapel being intrusted to him; a proof of his early talent and the just appreciation of it.  The frescoes are much injured, but of the chief one there is enough to show its excellence.  On one side is St. John, with clasped hands gazing upwards in grief, and the two Marys sorrowing, as a soldier in the centre seems to forbid their following further; his helmet is embossed and gilt as in the instances in the Franciscan church, while the two thieves are led bound by a figure on horseback.”

These frescoes appear to me to have been not so much restored as repainted—that is to say, where they are not almost entirely gone.  The green colour that now prevails in the shadows and half-tones is alien to Gaudenzio, and cannot be accepted as his.  I should say, however, that my friend Signor Arienta of Varallo differs from me on this point.  At any rate, the work is now little more than a ruin, and the terra-cotta Pietà is among the least satisfactory groups on the Sacro Monte.  Mr. King continues:—

“In the Chapel of the Adoration of the Magi we have a work of higher merit, giving evidence of his studies under Raphael.”

Here Mr. King is in some measure mistaken.  The frescoes in the Magi Chapel are indeed greatly finer than those in the present Pietà, but they were painted from thirty to forty years later, when Gaudenzio was in his prime, and it is to years of intervening incessant effort and practice, not to any study under Raphael, that the enlargement of style and greater freedom of design is due.  Gaudenzio never studied under Raphael; he may have painted for him, and perhaps did so—no one knows whether he did or did not—but in every branch of his art he was incomparably Raphael’s superior, and must have known it perfectly well.

Returning to Mr. King, with whom, in the main, I am in cordial sympathy, we read:—

“The group of ten figures in terra-cotta represents the three kings just arrived with their immediate attendants, and alighting at the door of an inner recess, where a light burns over the manger of Bethlehem, and in which is a simple but exquisite group of St. Joseph, the Virgin, and Child.  On the walls of the chapel are painted in fresco a crowd of followers, the varieties of whose costumes, attitudes, and figures are most cleverly portrayed.  In modelling the horses which form part of the central group, Ferrari was assisted by his pupil Fermo Stella.”—[Fermo Stella is not known to have been a pupil of Gaudenzio’s, and was probably established as a painter before Gaudenzio began to work at all.]—“But the greatest of all Gaudenzio’s achievements is the large chapel of the Crucifixion, a work of the most extraordinary character and masterly execution.  His first design for the subject, on the screen of the Minorite Church, he has here carried out in life-like figures in terra-cotta; twenty-six of which form the centre group, embodying the events of the Passion; while round the walls are depicted with wonderful power a crowd of spectators, numbering some 150, most of whom are gazing at the central figure of the Saviour on the cross.  The variety of expression, costume, and character is almost infinite.  Round the roof are twenty angels in the most varied and graceful attitudes, deserving of special attention; and also a hideous figure of Lucifer.”

Gaudenzio’s devils are never quite satisfactory.  His angels are divine, and no one can make them cry as he does.  When my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones met a lovely child crying in the streets of Varallo last summer, he said it was crying like one of Gaudenzio’s angels; and so it was.  Gaudenzio was at home with everything human, and even superhuman, if beautiful; if it was only a case of dealing with ugly, wicked, and disagreeable people, he knew all about this, and could paint them if the occasion required it; but when it came to a downright unmitigated devil, he was powerless.  He could never have done Tabachetti’s serpent in the Adam and Eve Chapel, nor yet the plausible fair-spoken devil, as in the Temptation Chapel, also by Tabachetti.

To conclude my extracts from Mr. King.  Speaking of the Crucifixion Chapel, he says:—

“Though this combination of terra-cotta and fresco may not be as highly esteemed in the present day as in the times when this extraordinary sanctuary sprang into existence, yet this composition must always be admired as one of the greatest of Ferrari’s works, and undoubtedly that on which he lavished the full force of his genius and the collected studies and experience of his previous artist life.”

It is noteworthy, but not perhaps surprising, that this observant, intelligent, and sympathetic writer, probably through inability to at once understand and enter into the conventions rendered necessary by the conditions under which works so unfamiliar to him must be both executed and looked at, has failed to notice the existence of Tabachetti, never mentioning his name nor referring to one of his works—not even to the Madonna and Child in the church of S. Gaudenzio, which one would have thought could hardly fail to strike him.