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 CreaButler, Samuel
Religion
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
Butler, Samuel
Art -- Italy -- Varallo-Sesia; Sacro Monte di Varallo (Sanctuary); Tabaguet, Jean Baptiste, 1568 -1615
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 quì,” says
Torrotti, “pascoli deliziosi per i curiosi e più 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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