Mr. King has elsewhere in his work referred both to Lanzi and to Lomazzo in support of his very high opinion of Gaudenzio Ferrari; it may, therefore, be as well to give extracts from each of these writers.  Lanzi says:—

“If we examine into further particulars of his style, we shall find Ferrari’s warm and lively colouring so superior to that of the Milanese artists of his day, that we shall have no difficulty in recognising it in the churches where he painted; the eye of the spectator is directly attracted towards it; his carnations are natural and varied according to his subjects; his draperies display much fancy and originality, with middle tints blended so skilfully as to equal the most beautiful produced by any other artist.  And, if we may say so,—he succeeded in representing the minds even better than the forms of his subjects.  He particularly studied this branch of the art, and we seldom observe more marked attitudes or more expressive . . . As Lomazzo, however, has dwelt so much at length on his admirable skill both in painting and modelling, it would be idle to insist on it further.  But I ought to add that it is a great reflection upon Vasari that he did not better know or better estimate such an artist; so that foreigners who form their opinions only from history are left unacquainted with his merit, and have uniformly neglected to do him justice in their writings.”

Lomazzo says:—

“Now amongst the worthy painters who excelled herein, Raph. Urbine was not the least who performed his workes with a divine kind of maiesty; neither was Polidore”—[Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio]—“much behind him in his kinde, whose pictures seemed as it were passing furious; nor yet Andreas Mantegna, whose vaine showed a very laborious curiositie; nor yet Leonard Vincent”—[Leonardo da Vinci]—“in whose doings there was never any error found in this point.  Wherof amongst all other of his works, that admirable last supper of Christ in Refect. S. Maria de Gratia in Milane maketh most evident proofe, in which he hath so lively expressed the passions of the Apostles mindes in their countenances and the rest of their bodies, that a man may boldly say the truth was nothing superior to his representation, and neede not be afraide to reckon it among the best works of oyle-painting (of which kind of painting John de Bruges was the first inventor).  For in those Apostles you might distinctly perceive admiration, feare, griefe, suspition, love, &c.; all which were sometimes to be seen together in one of them, and finally in Judas a treason-plotting countenance, as it were the very true counterfiet of a traitor.  So that therein he has left a sufficient argument of his rare perfection, in the true understanding of the passions of the mind exemplified outwardly in the bodie.  Which because it is the most necessary part of painting, I purpose (as I say) to handle in this present booke.  I may not omit Mi. Angelo in any case, whose skill and painfulnesse in this point was so greate, that his pictures carry with them more hard motions expressed after an unusual manner, but all of them tending to a certaine bould stoutnesse.  And as for Titian, he hath worthely purchased the name of a great painter in this matter, as his pictures do sufficiently witness; in each whereof there shineth a certain mooving vertue, seeming to incite the beholder unto the imitation thereof.  Of whom this saying may well be verified, that he was beloved of the world and envied of nature.

“Finally, mine old Master Gaudentius (though he be not much knowne) was inferior unto fewe, in giving the apt motions to the Saintes and Angels; who was not onely a very witty painter (as I have elsewhere showed), but also a most profound philosopher and mathematician.  Amongst all whose all-praiseworthy workes (which are almost infinite, especially in this point of motion) there are divers mysteries of Christe’s passion, of his doing, but chiefly a crucifix called Mount Calvary at the Sepulchre of Varallo; where he hath made admirable horses and strange angels, not only in painting, but also in plasticke, of a kinde of earth wrought most curiously with his own hand cleane rounde”—[di tutto rilievo]—“through all the figures.

“Besides in the vault of the Chappell of S. Mary de Gratia in Milane he hath wrought most naturall angels, I meane especially for their actions; there is also that mighty cube of St. Mary de Serono, the Cupola of S. Maria at Saronno, full of thrones of angells set out with actions and habites of all sortes, carrying diversity of most strange instruments in their hands.  I may not conceal that goodly chapel which he made in his latter time, in the Church of Peace in Milan, where you shall find small histories of our Lady and Joachime showing such superexcellent motions that they seem much to revive and animate the spectators.

“Moreover, the story of S. Roccho done by him in Vercelli, with divers workes in that city; although indeede almost all Lombardy be adorned with his most rare workes, I will not conceal one saying, which was that all painters delight to steale other men’s inventions, but that he himself was in no great danger of being detected of theft hereafter.  Now this great painter, although in reason he might for his discretion, wisedome, and worth be compared with the above named in the first booke, cap. 29, yet notwithstanding is he omitted by George Vasary in his lives of the famous painters, carvers, and architects.  An argument, to say no worse of him, that he intended to eternise only his own Tuscanes.  But I proceede to the unfoulding of the originall causes of these motions.  And first for our better understanding I will beginne with those passions of the mind whereby the body is mooved to the performance of his particular effects” (Id., Book ii. pp. 7, 8).

What Gaudenzio said was that all painters were fond of stealing, but that they were pretty sure to be found out sooner or later.

For my own part, I should like to say that I prefer Giovanni Bellini to Gaudenzio; but unless Giotto and Giorgione, I really do not know who the Italian painters should stand before him.  Bernardino Luini runs him close, but great as Bernardino Luini was, Gaudenzio, in spite of not a little mannerism, was greater.

The passage above referred to by Lomazzo as from his twenty-ninth chapter runs:—

“Now if any man be desirous to learne the most exact and smallest parts of these proportions, together with the way how to transfer them from one body to another, I refer him to the works of Le. Vincent, Bramante, Vincentius Foppa, Barnard Zenale; and for prints to Albert Durer, Hispill Peum, &c.  And out of mine owne workes he may gather that I have endeavoured if not performed these proportions, done according to these rules; which all the best and famous painters of our time have likewise observed; who have also attained to the exquisite proportions of the seven planets.  Amongst whom Mi. Angelo hath merited the chiefest commendation; next him Raph. Urbine was famous for making of delicate and Venereall bodies; Leon. Vincent for expressing of solary bodies; Polidore Caldara of Caravaggio for Martiall bodies; Titianus Vecellino for Lunaryes; and Gaudentius Ferrato da Valdugia a Milaner for Jovialistes” (55 Bk. i. p. 117).

Having been compelled to look through the greater part of Lomazzo’s work, inasmuch as not one of the several writers who have referred to his high opinion of Gaudenzio has given chapter and page, I would fain allow myself to linger somewhat in the fascinating paths into which my subject has led me.  I should like to call further attention to this forgotten work as “Englished” by one Richard Haydocke, “Student in Physik,” and dedicated to no less a person than “to the Right Worshipful Thomas Bodley, Esq.,” whose foundation of the library that bears his name is referred to in the preface.  Gladly would I tell him about Alexander the Great, who, being overmatched by his enemies in India, “was seen to reake forth from his bodie fier and light;” and of the father of Theodoricus, who, “by the like vehement effect, breathed out of his heart, as from a burning furnace, fierce sparkels; which flying forth, shone, and made a sound in the aire.”  I should like to explain to him about the motions of the seven planets which are the seven governours of the world, and how Saturn “causeth a complexion of colour between blacke and yeallowe, meager, distorted, of an harde skinne, eminent vaines, an hairie bodie, small eies, eie brows joyned together &c.,” and how “he maketh a man subtle, wittie, a way-layer, and murtherer;” how, again, Jupiter is “magnipotent, good natured, fortunate, sweete, pleasant, the best wel-willer, honest, neate, of a good gate, honorable, the author of mirth and judgement, wise, true, the revealer of truth, the chiefe judge, exceeding all the planets in goodnesse, the bestower of riches and wisedome;” how Mars “broaches bould spirites, bloud, brawles and all disordered, inconsiderate, and headdy actions;” how “his gestures are terrible, cruell, fierce, angry, proude, hasty and violent,” and how also “he is reputed hoat and drie in the highest degree, bearing sway over redde choler.”  I should like to tell him about the passions, actions, and the gestures they occasion, described as they are with a sweet and silly unreasonableness that is very charming to read, and makes no demand whatever upon the understanding.  But charming as are the pages of Lomazzo, those of Torrotti are more charming still, and they have a connection with our subject which Lomazzo’s have not.  Enough, therefore, that Mr. Haydocke did not get through more than half Lomazzo’s treatise, and that, glancing over the untranslated pages, I see frequent allusions to Gaudenzio in the warmest terms, but no passage so important as the longer of the two quoted above.

CHAPTER III.
VARALLO, PAST AND PRESENT.

CHAPTER IV.
BERNARDINO CAIMI, AND FASSOLA.

The exceptional position of Varallo as regards North Italian art must be referred mainly to its selection by Bernardino Caimi as the site for the New Jerusalem which he founded there at the end of the fifteenth century; a few words, therefore, concerning him will not be out of place here; I learn from Torrotti that he was a “Frate Minore Osservante di S. Francesco,” and came of the noble and illustrious Milanese family of the Counts Caimi.  He had been Patriarch of the Holy Land, and, as I find stated in Signor Galloni’s excellent work already referred to, [40] had been employed on important missions in the island of Cyprus, chiefly in connection with the reformation of abuses.  Full of zeal and devotion he returned to his native country, and ere long conceived the design of reproducing in Italy a copy of the most important sites in the Holy Land, for the comfort and greater commodity of so many Christians who, being unable to commit themselves to long and weary voyages by land and sea, and among infidels, might gather thence some portion of that spiritual fruit which were otherwise beyond their reach.

Old and mendicant as he was, he was nothing daunted by the magnitude of the task before him, and searched Lombardy from one end to the other in his desire to provide Providence with a suitable abode.  For a long while he sought in vain, and could find no place that was really like Jerusalem, but at last, towards the end of 1491, he came to Varallo alone, and had hardly got there before he felt himself rapt into an ecstasy, in the which he was drawn towards the Sacro Monte; when he got up to the plain on the top of the mountain which was then called “La Parete,” perceiving at once its marvellous resemblance to Jerusalem, even to the existence of another mountain hard by which was like Calvary, he threw himself on the ground and thanked God in a transport of delight.  It is said that for some time previously the shepherds who watched their flocks on this solitary height had been talking of nothing but of heavenly harmonies that had been heard coming from the sky; that Caimi himself while yet in the Holy Land had been shown this place in a vision; and that on reaching an eminence called Sceletta he had been conducted to the site itself by the song of a bird which sang with such extraordinary sweetness that he had been constrained to follow it.

I should have set this bird down as a blue rock thrush or passero solitario, for I know these birds breed yearly on the Sacro Monte, and no bird sings so sweetly as they do, but we are expressly told that Caimi did not reach Varallo till the end of the year, and the passeri solitarii have all migrated by the end of August.  We have seen, however, that Milano Scarrognini actually founded a chapel in October 1491, so Torrotti is wrong in his date, and Caimi may have come in 1490, and perhaps in August, before the passeri were gone.  There can be little doubt in fact that he came, or at any rate chose his site, before 1486.

Whatever the bird may have been, Caimi now communicated his design to the Consiglio della Vicinanza at Varallo, through Milano de’ Scarrognini, who was a member of the body, and who also gave support in money; negotiations were not finally concluded until the 14th of April 1493, on which day, as we have already seen, the site of the monastery of S. Maria della Grazie was conveyed to the Padri dell’ Osservanza with the concession of a right to build their New Jerusalem on the adjoining mountain—which they had already begun to do for some time past.

Divine assistance was manifest in the ease with which everything had been arranged, but Torrotti goes on to assure us that it was presently made still clearer.  The design had been to begin with a reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre, and hardly had the workmen begun to dig for the foundation of this first work, when a stone was found, not only resembling the one which covered the actual Holy Sepulchre itself, but an absolute facsimile of it in all respects—as like it, in fact, or even more so, than Varallo was to Jerusalem.  The testimony to this was so notorious, and the fact was so soon and widely known, that pilgrims flocked in crowds and brought gifts enough to bring the first abode of the Fathers with the chapel beside it to a speedy and successful completion.  Everything having been now started auspiciously, and the Blessed Bernardino having been allowed to look, as it were, into the promised land, God took him to Himself on the 5th day of the Ides of February 1496, or—as I have above said that the inscription on Caimi’s tomb declares—in 1499.

The churches, both the one below the mountain in which Gaudenzio’s great series of frescoes may be still seen, and the one on the top, which stood on the site now occupied by the large house that stands to the right of the present church, and is called the Casino, were consecrated between the 5th and 7th days of September 1501, and by this time several of the chapels with figures in them had been taken in hand, and were well advanced if not completed.

Fassola’s version of Bernardino Caimi’s visit is more guarded than Torrotti’s is.  Before going on to it I will say here the little that need be said about Fassola himself.  I find from Signor Galloni’s “Uomini e fatti” (p. 208) that he was born at Rassa above Bucioleto in the Val Grande, on the 19th of September 1648.  His family had one house at Rassa, and another at Varallo, which last is believed to have been what is now the hotel Croce Bianca, at which I always myself stay.  Torrotti, in his preface, claims to have been one of his masters; he also says that Fassola was only eighteen when he wrote his work on the Sacro Monte, and that he had published a work when he was only fourteen.  The note given by Signor Galloni [p. 233] settles it that Fassola was born “anno D. 1648 die 19 septembris hora 22 min. 30,” so that either the book lay some years unpublished, or he was over twenty when he wrote it.  Like the edition of Caccia already referred to, it is dated a year later than the one in which it actually appeared, so that the present custom of post-dating late autumn books is not a new one.  In the preface the writer speaks of his pen as being “tenera non tanto per talento quanto per l’età.”  In the same preface he speaks of himself as having a double capacity, one as a Delegate to the governing body of the valley, and the other as a canon; but he must mean some kind of lay canon, for I cannot find that he was ever ordained.  In 1672 he published his work “La Valsesia descritta,” which according to Signor Galloni is more hastily written than his earlier work.  On the 14th of December, the same year, he left the Valsesia and travelled to France, keeping a journal for some time, which Signor Galloni tells us still existed in 1873 in the possession of Abate Cav. Carestia of Riva Valdobbia.  He went to Paris, and appears to have stayed there till 1683, when he returned to Varallo, and the Valsesia.

He found his country torn by faction, and was immediately hailed by all parties as the one man whom all could agree to elect as Regent General of the Valley.  He was elected, and on the 5th of October convened his first general council of the Valsesia.  He seems to have been indefatigable as an administrator during the short time he held office, but in the year 1684 was deposed by the Milanese, who on the 3rd of December sent a body of armed men to seize him and take him to Milan.  He was warned in time to fly, and escaped to France, where according to some he died, while others say that he settled in Poland and there attained high distinction.  Nothing, however, is known for certain about him later than the year 1684 or the beginning of 1685.

In 1686 Torrotti published his book.  He says that Fassola during his regency repeatedly desired him “ripigliare questa relatione per commodità dei Pelegrini, Divoti, visitanti,” and that so much new matter had come to light since Fassola’s time that a new work was called for.  Fassola, he says, even in the midst of his terrible misfortunes, continued to take the warmest interest in his native city, and in the Sacro Monte, where it appears he had been saluted by a very memorable and well-known miracle, which was so well known in Torrotti’s time that it was not necessary to tell us what it was.  Fassola may or may not have urged Torrotti to write a second work upon the Sacro Monte, but he can hardly have intended him to make it little more than a transcript of his own book.  If new facts had come to light they do not appear in Torrotti’s pages.  He very rarely adds to Fassola, and never corrects him; when Fassola is wrong Torrotti is wrong also; even when something is added I have a strong suspicion that it comes from Fassola’s second book.  On the whole I am afraid I regard Torrotti as somewhat of a plagiarist—at least as regards his matter, for his manner is his own and is very quaint, garrulous, and pleasing.

Fassola’s work is full of inaccuracies, and of such inaccuracies as can only be explained on the supposition that the writer resided mainly at Rassa, wrote his book there, and relied too much upon notes which he did not verify after his work was written.  Nevertheless, as Signor Galloni justly says, “he must be allowed the merit of having preserved an immense mass of matter from otherwise almost certain destruction, and his pages when subjected to rigid examination and criticism furnish abundant material to the writer of genuine history.”

He leans generally much less towards the miraculous than Torrotti does.  After saying, for example, that Bernardino Caimi had returned from Jerusalem in 1481 full of devotion and with the fixed intention of reproducing the Holy City on Italian soil, he continues:—

“With this holy intent the good ecclesiastic journeyed to the mountains of Biella, and thence to the Val d’Ossola, and thence to several places in the Valsesia, which of all others was the valley in which he was most inclined to unburden his mind of the treasure of his heroic design.  Finally, arriving at Varallo, as the place of most resort, where most of those would come whose means and goodwill would incline them to works of piety, he resolved to choose the most suitable site that he could here find.  According to some, while taking counsel with himself and with all who could help him, the site which we now adore was shown him in a vision; others say that on walking without the town he was seduced by the angelic warbling of a bird, and thus ravished to a spot where he found all things in such order for his design that he settled upon it then and there.  Many hold as true the story of certain shepherds who about a fortnight earlier than the coming of the father, heard songs of more than earthly sweetness as they were keeping watch over their flocks by night.”

“But,” concludes Fassola, with some naiveté considering the reserve he has shown in accepting any of the foregoing stories, “take it in whatever way you will, the inception of the place was obviously miraculous.”

CHAPTER V.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE SACRO MONTE.

Confining our attention to Varallo, the history of the Sacro Monte divides itself into two main periods; the first, from the foundation to the visit of S. Carlo Borromeo in 1678; the second, from the visit of S. Carlo to the present day.  The first of these periods begins with 1486, in which year the present Sacro Monte was no doubt formally contemplated, if not actually commenced.  That it was contemplated is shown by the inscription on Caimi’s grave already given, and also by the first of the two deeds given in Signor Galloni’s notes, from which it appears [52] that under the brief of December 21, 1486, Caimi had powers to take over the land now covered by the chapels, even though he should be absent—it being evidently intended that the land should be conveyed at once, and before he could return from Jerusalem, for which place he started in 1487.  Moreover, there remains one small chapel with frescoes that can hardly be later than 1485–1490.  This is now numbered 45, and is supposed by many to be older even than Caimi’s first visit.  It may be so, but there is nothing to show that it actually was.  I have seen a date scratched on it which it is said is 1437, but the four is really a five, which in old writing is often taken for a four, and the frescoes, which in their own way are of considerable merit, would be most naturally assigned to about the date 1485–1490.  I do not think there can be a doubt that we have in this chapel the earliest existing building on the Sacro Monte, but find it impossible to form any opinion as to whether it was in existence before Bernardino Caimi’s time, or no.

In the second of the two deeds given by Signor Galloni (p. 85), the following passage occurs:—

“Et similiter fecerunt ipsi Sindici, et Procuratores, ut suprà introducendo ipsum Patrem Vicarium ut suprà in Eremitorium sancti Sepulchri existent. in loco ubi dicebatur super pariete, aperiendo eidem ostia dicti Eremitorij, et dando eidem claues Ostiorum dicti eremitorij, et eum deambulari faciendo in eo, et similiter in Hortis dicti Eremitorij, dando eidem in gremium ut suprà de terris, herbis, et frondibus, et lapidibus existen. in locis prædictis, et similiter in Capella existente subtus crucem, et in Capellam Ascensionis Ædificatam super Monte prædicto.  Qui locus est de membris dicti Monasterii suprascripti.”

Neither Signor Galloni, who pointed out this passage to me, nor I, though we have more than once discussed the matter on the ground itself, can arrive at any conclusion as to what was intended by “the chapel now in existence under the cross,” nor yet what chapel is intended by “the chapel of the Ascension on the said mountain.”  It is probable that there was an early chapel of the Ascension, and the wooden figure of Christ on the fountain in the piazza before the church was very likely taken from it, but there is no evidence to show where it stood.

Signor Arienta tells me that the chapel now occupied by the Temptation in the Wilderness was formerly a chapel of the Ascension.  He told me to go round to the back of this chapel, and I should find it was earlier than appeared from the front.  I did so, and saw it had formerly fronted the other way to what it does now, but among the many dates scrawled on it could find none earlier than 1506, and it is not likely to have been built thirteen years before it got scrawled on.

Some hold the chapels referred to in the deed above quoted from to have included the present Annunciation, Salutation, and sleeping St. Joseph block—or part of it.  Others hold them to have referred to the chapels now filled by the Pietà and the Entombment (Nos. 40 and 41); but it should not be forgotten that by 1493 the chapels of S. Francis and the Holy Sepulchre were already in existence, though no mention is made of them; and there may have been other chapels also already built of which no mention is made.  Thus immediately outside the St. Francis chapel and towards the door leading to the Holy Sepulchre, there is a small recess in which is placed an urn of iron that contains the head of Bernardino Caimi with a Latin inscription; and hard by there is another inscription which runs as follows:—

“Magnificus D. Milanus Scarrogninus hoc Sepulcrum cum fabrica sibi contigua Christo posuit die septimo Octobris MCCCCLXXXXI.  R. P. Frater Bernardinus de Mediolano Ordinis Minorum de Observ. sacra hujus montis excogitavit loca, ut hic Hierusalem videat qui peragrare nequit.”

We may say with some confidence that the present chapel No. 45, those numbered 40 and 41, the block containing the St. Francis and Holy Sepulchre chapels, and probably the Presepio, Adoration of the Shepherds, and Circumcision chapels—though it may be doubted whether these last contained the figures that they now do—were in existence before the year 1500.  Part if not all of the block containing the Sta. Casa di Loreto, in which the Annunciation is now found, is also probably earlier than 1500, as also an early Agony in the Garden now long destroyed, but of which we are told that the figures were originally made of wood.  Over and above these there was a Cena, Capture, Flagellation, and an Ascension chapel, all of which contained wooden figures, and cannot be dated later than the three or four earliest years of the sixteenth century.  No wooden figure is to be dated later than this, for when once an oven for baking clay had been made (and this must have been done soon after Gaudenzio took the works on the Sacro Monte in hand) the use of wood was discarded never to be resumed.

According to both Fassola and Torrotti, the first chapel erected on the Sacro Monte was that of S. Francesco, with its adjacent reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre.  According to Bordiga the first was the entombment, containing nine figures of wood, or, as the earlier writers say, eight.  Bordiga probably means that the Entombment was the earliest chapel with figures in it, and the other writers that the St. Francis chapel was the first in which mass was said.  These last speak very highly of the wooden figures in the Entombment chapel, and so more guardedly does Bordiga.  I will return to them when I come to the present group of nine by Luigi Marchesi, a sculptor of Saltrio, which were substituted for the old ones in 1826.  The early writers say that there was no fresco background to this chapel, and this suggests that the attempt to combine sculpture and painting was not part of the initial scheme, though soon engrafted on to it, inasmuch as this is the only chapel about which I find it expressly stated by early writers that it was without a fresco background (“senza pittura alcuna”). [57]  Though there was no fresco background, Bordiga says there was a fresco painted, doubtless done very early in his career, by Gaudenzio Ferrari, outside the chapel just above the iron grating through which the visitor must look.  Probably the original scheme was to have sculptured figures inside the chapels, and frescoes outside; by an easy modification these last were transferred from the outside to the inside, and so designed as to form an integral part of the composition: the daring scheme of combining the utmost resources of both painting and sculpture in a single work was thus gradually evolved rather than arrived at per saltum.  Assuming, however, the currently received date of 1503 or 1504 as correct for Gaudenzio’s frescoes in the present Pietà chapel, the conception as carried out in the greater number of the existing chapels had then attained the shape from which no subsequent departure was made.

Returning to Gaudenzio’s fresco outside the S. Francesco chapel, Bordiga says that Caccia gave the following lines on this work:—

“Sotto un vicino portico di fuore
Portato a sepelir è di pittura
Un Cristo; che non mai Zeuxi pittore
Di questo finse piu bella figura,
Che un San Francesco possa pareggiare,
Pinto più inanzi sopra d’un altare.”

The reader will note that the fresco is here expressly stated to be “di fuore” or outside and not inside the chapel.

Both Fassola and Torrotti place this fresco on the outside wall of the chapel of St. Francis, but Bordiga is probably right in saying it was on the Entombment chapel.  No trace of it remains, nor yet of the other works by Gaudenzio, which all three writers agree were in the S. Francesco chapel, though they must all have been some few years later than the chapel itself.  These consisted of portraits of Milano Scarrognini with Father Beato Candido Ranzo Bernardino Caimi upon the gospel, or right, side of the altar, and of Scarrognini’s wife and son with Bernardino Caimi, on the epistle side.  According to Bordiga, Gaudenzio also painted a St. Anthony of Padua, and a St. Helena, one on either side the grating.  Inside the chapel over the altar was a painting of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, also by Gaudenzio.  This is the only one of his works in or about the S. Francesco chapel which still exists; it is now in the pinacoteca of the Museum at Varallo, but is not, so far as I could judge of it, one of his best pictures.  The other works were in a decayed condition in 1703, when they were removed, and the chapel was redecorated by Francesco Leva, a painter of Milan.

The Crucifixion chapel of Gaudenzio Ferrari was begun and finished between 1520 and 1530.  I have found three excellently written dates of 1529 scrawled upon the fresco background.  One of them, “1529 Die 26 Octobre Johannes Antoninus,” is especially clear, and the other two leave no doubt what year was intended.  I have found no earlier date, but should not be surprised if further search were more successful.  I may say in passing that it seemed to me as though some parts of the scar made by the inscription had been filled with paint, while others had certainly not—as though the work had been in parts retouched, not so very long ago.  I think this is so, but two or three to whom I showed what I took to be the new colour were not convinced, so I must leave others to decide the point.

The Magi chapel must be assigned to some date between the years 1530 and 1539—I should say probably to about 1538, but I will return to this later on.  Torrotti says that some of the figures on the Christ taken for the last time before Pilate (chapel No. 32) are by Gaudenzio, as also some paintings that were preserved when the Palazzo di Pilato was built, but I can see no sign of either one or the other now; nevertheless it is likely enough that several figures—transformed as we shall presently see that d’Enrico or his assistants knew very well how to transform them—are doing duty in the Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, and Ecce Homo chapels.  So cunningly did the workmen of that time disguise a figure when they wanted to alter its character and action that it would be no easy matter to find out exactly what was done; if they could turn an Eve, as they did, into a very passable Roman soldier assisting at the capture of Christ, they could make anything out of anything.  A figure was a figure, and was not to be thrown away lightly.

Soon after the completion of the Magi chapel the work flagged in consequence of the wars then devastating the provinces of North Italy; nevertheless by the middle of the sixteenth century we learn from Torrotti that some nineteen chapels had been completed.

It is idle to spend much time in guessing which these chapels were, when Caccia’s work, published in 1565, is sure to be found some day and will settle the matter authoritatively, but the reader will not be far wrong if he sees the Sacro Monte by the year 1550 as consisting of the following chapels: Adam and Eve, Annunciation, Salutation (?), Magi, Adoration of the Infant Jesus by the Shepherds, Adoration by Joseph and Mary, Circumcision, (but not the present figures nor fresco background), Last Supper, Agony in the Garden, Capture, Flagellation, Crowning with thorns (?), Christ taken for the last time before Pilate, the Original journey to Calvary, Fainting Madonna, Crucifixion, Entombment, Ascension, and the old church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary now removed.  There were probably one or two others, but there cannot have been many.

In the 1586 edition of Caccia, a MS. copy of which I have before me, the chapels are given as follows: Adam and Eve, Annunciation, and Santa Casa di Loreto, Visit of Mary to Elizabeth, Magi, Joseph and Mary worshipping the Infant Christ, and the Adoration of Shepherds, [62] Circumcision, Joseph warned to fly, the chapel (but not the figures) of the Massacre of the Innocents, Flight into Egypt Baptism, Temptation in the Wilderness, Woman of Samaria, the chapel (but not the figures) of the Healing of the Paralytic, and the Raising of the Widow’s son at Nain, the Raising of Lazarus, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, Agony in the Garden, Capture, Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, Christ carrying His cross to Calvary (doubtless Tabachetti’s chapel), the Fainting of the Virgin, the earlier Journey to Calvary by Gaudenzio (now dispersed or destroyed), Crucifixion, Pietà, Holy Sepulchre, Appearance to Mary Magdalene (now no longer existing).

I should say, however, that I find it impossible to reconcile the two accounts of the journeys to Calvary, given in the prose introduction to this work, and in the poetical description that follows it, or rather to understand the topography of the poetical version at all, for the prose account is plain enough.  I shall place a MS. copy of the 1586 edition of Caccia’s book in the British Museum, before this present volume is published, and will leave other students of Valsesian history to be more fortunate if they can.  Poetical descriptions are so far better than prose, inasmuch as there is generally less of them in a page, but on the whole prose has the advantage.

It would be interesting to see the 1565 and 1576 editions of Caccia, and note the changes and additions that can be found in them.  The differences between the 1586 and 1590 editions (dated 1587 and 1591—the preface to the second being dated September 25, 1589), are enough to throw considerable additional light upon the history of the place, and if, as I believe likely, we find no mention of Tabachetti’s Calvary chapel in the edition of 1576, nor of his other chapels, we should be able to date his arrival at Varallo within a very few years, and settle a question which, until these two editions of Caccia are found, appears insoluble.  I must be myself content with pointing out these libri desiderati to the future historian.

Some say that the work on the Sacro Monte was almost discontinued between the years 1540 and 1580.  I cannot, however, find that this was so, though it appears to have somewhat flagged.  I cannot tell whether Tabachetti came to Varallo before S. Carlo or after him.  If before, then a good deal of the second impetus may be due to the sculptor rather than to the saint; if after, and as a consequence of S. Carlo’s visit, then indeed S. Carlo must be considered as the second founder of the place; but whatever view is taken about this, S. Carlo’s visit in 1578 is convenient as marking a new departure in the history of the Sacro Monte, and he may be fairly called its second founder.

Giussano gives the following account of his first visit, which makes us better understand the austere expression that reigns on S. Carlo’s face, as we see it represented in his portraits:—

“It was two o’clock in the day before St. Charles arrived at this place, and he had not broken his fast, but before taking anything he visited the different chapels for meditation, of which Father Adorno gave him the points.  As evening drew on, he withdrew to take his refection of bread and water, and then returned again to the chapels till after midnight though the weather was very cold” [end of October or beginning of November].  “He then took two hours’ rest on a chair, and at five o’clock in the morning resumed his devotions; then, after having said his Mass, he again allowed himself a small portion of bread and water, and continued his journey to Milan, renewed in fervour of spirit, and with a firm determination to begin again to serve God with greater energy than ever.” [65]

Surely one may add “according to his lights” after the words “to serve God.”  The second visit of St. Charles to Varallo, a few days before his death, is even more painful reading, and the reader may be referred for an account of it to chapter xi. of the second volume of the work last quoted from.  He had a cell in the cloister, where he slept on a wooden bed, which is still shown and venerated, and used to spend hours in contemplating the various sacred mysteries, but most especially the Agony in the Garden, near which a little shelter was made for him, and in which he was praying when his impending death was announced to him by an angel.  But this chapel, which was near the present Transfiguration Chapel, was destroyed and rebuilt on its present site after his death, as also the Cena Chapel, which originally contained frescoes by Bernardino Lanini.  It was on the Sacro Monte that S. Carlo discharged his last public functions, after which, feeling that he had taken a chill, he left Varallo on the 29th of October 1584, and died at Milan six days afterwards.

At S. Carlo’s instance Pellegrino Pellegrini, called Tibaldi, made a new design for the Sacro Monte, which was happily never carried out, but which I am told involved the destruction of many of the earlier chapels.  He made the plan of the Sacro Monte as it stood in his time, which I have already referred to, and designed the many chapels mentioned in the 1586 edition of Caccia as about to be built.  Prominent among these was the Temple of Solomon, which was to involve “una spesa grandissima,” and was to be as like the real temple as it could be made.  Inside it were to be groups of figures representing Christ driving out those that bought and sold, and it was to have a magnificent marble portico.

The Palazzo di Pilato, which, as the name denotes, is devoted to the sufferings of Christ under Pontius Pilate, was actually carried out, though not till some years after S. Carlo’s death, and not according to Pellegrini’s design.  It is most probable that the designer of the Palazzo di Pilato, and of the Caiaphas and Herod chapels as we now see them, was Giovanni d’Enrico.  “It was in 1608,” says Bordiga, [66] writing of the Santa Scala, which leads from the Crowning with Thorns to the Ecce Homo chapels, and which, one would say, must have been one of the first things done when the Palazzo di Pilato was made, “that this work with its steps, exactly twenty-eight in number, was begun, according to the design obtained from Rome by Francesco Testa, who was then Fabbriciere.  This is for the information of those who think it is the work of Pellegrini.”

Between this year and 1645 the four Pilate chapels, the Ecce Homo, Caiaphas, Herod, present Pietà, Sleeping Apostles, Agony in the Garden, and Christ Nailed to the Cross chapels were either created or reconstructed.  These works bear d’Enrico’s name in the guide-books, and he no doubt presided over the work that was done in them; but I should say that by far the greater number of the figures in them are by Giacomo Ferro, his assistant, to whom I will return presently, or by other pupils and assistants.  Only one chapel, the Transfiguration, belongs to the second half of the seventeenth century, and one, the Christ before Annas, to the eighteenth (1765); one—the present Entombment—belongs to the nineteenth, and one or two have been destroyed, as has been unfortunately the case with the Chiesa Vecchia; but the plan of the Sacro Monte in 1671, which I here give, will show that it was not much different then from what it is at present.  The numbers on the chapels are explained as follows:—

1.  Gate.

2.  Creation of the world and Adam and Eve.

3.  Annunciation.

4.  Salutation.

5.  First vision of St. Joseph.

6.  Magi.

7.  Nativity.

8.  Circumcision.

9.  Second vision of St. Joseph.

10.  Flight into Egypt.

11.  Massacre of the Innocents.

12.  Baptism.

13.  Temptation.

14.  Woman of Samaria.

15.  Healing the Paralytic.

16.  Widow’s son at Nain.

17.  Transfiguration.

18.  Raising of Lazarus.

19.  Entry into Jerusalem.

20.  Last Supper.

21.  Agony in the Garden.

22.  Sleeping Apostles.

23.  Capture.

24.  Caiaphas, and Penitence of St. Peter.

25.  Christ before Pilate.

26.  Christ before Herod.

27.  Christ sent again to Pilate.

28.  Flagellation.

29.  Crowning with thorns.

30.  Christ about to ascend the Santa Scala (not shown on plan).

31.  Ecce Homo.

32.  Pilate washes his hands.

33.  Christ condemned to death.

34.  Christ carrying the Cross.

35.  Nailing to the Cross.

36.  Passion.

37.  Deposition from the Cross.

38.  Pietà.

39.  Entombment (not shown on plan).

40.  Chapel of St. Francis.

41.  Holy Sepulchre.

42.  Appearance to Mary Magdalene.

43.  Infancy of the Virgin.

44.  Sepulchre of the Virgin.

45.  Sepulchre of St. Anne.

46.  Ascended Christ over the fountain.

47.  Chiesa Vecchia.

48.  Chiesa Maggiore.

The view is a bird’s-eye one, and there is hardly any hill in reality.

Plate I: Plan of the Sacro Monte in 1671