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
I have said there are analogies between this figure and others by
Tabachetti which after all make it not very difficult to decide the
question to whom it should be given. We do not, indeed, find another
Vecchietto, but we shall find more than one figure that exhibits equal
truth to nature, and equal freedom from exaggeration. It is not
possible, for example, to have greater truth to nature than we find in
the figures of Adam and Eve in the first chapel. There is not one trace
either of too much or too little, of exaggeration or of shortcoming; the
nude figure of a man and of a woman were wanted, and the nude figure of a
man and of a woman are given, with neither more or less modelling than
what would be most naturally seen in a young and comely couple. So again
with the charming figure of the Virgin sewing in the First Vision of St.
Joseph chapel. The Virgin and the Vecchietto are as unlike each other as
two figures can be, but they are both stamped with the same freedom from
affectation, and the same absolute and easy mastery over the means
employed. The same applies to the sleeping St. Joseph, in which case
there is a closer analogy between the two figures themselves. It applies
also to a not inconsiderable extent to the man with a goitre who is
leading Christ in the Calvary chapel. This figure is not done from life,
being a repetition of one by Gaudenzio, but it is so living that we feel
sure it would have been more living still if Tabachetti had had the model
before him from which Gaudenzio in all probability actually worked. At
Crea, there are other figures by Tabachetti to which I will call
attention presently, and which present not inconsiderable analogies to
the Vecchietto. I explain the fact that the analogies are not closer, by
reflecting that this is the one of the few cases in which Tabachetti has
left us a piece of portrait work, pure and simple, and that his treatment
of the head and figure in pure portraiture, would naturally differ from
that adopted in an ideal and imaginative work.
CHAPTER XV. THE PIETÀ AND REMAINING CHAPELS.
THE remaining chapels are few in number, and, whatever they may once have
been, unimportant in character. The first is
CHAPEL NO. 40. THE PIETÀ.
The three preceding chapels are supposed to be on Mount Calvary, and from
them we descend by a flight of stone steps to the level of the piazza.
Immediately on reaching this we come upon the Pietà. We have seen that
this chapel originally contained Gaudenzio’s Journey to Calvary, and that
the fresco background still, in so far as it is not destroyed, treats
this subject, while the modelled figures represent the Pietà. Of
Gaudenzio’s original work Caccia says:—
“Come fu Christo de’ panni spogliato,
Montando il Monte poi Calvario detto,
Nel mezzo a manigoldi mal trattato,
Contemplar possi con pietoso affetto,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account