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
Torrotti says that some of the statues in the present chapel are by
Gaudenzio, which they are not. Fassola gives them all to Giovanni
D’Enrico; Bordiga speaks of the work in the highest terms, but for my own
part I do not admire it, nor, I am afraid, can I accept the more
fresh-looking parts of the fresco background as by Gaudenzio. I do not
doubt that his work has been in these parts repainted, and that the
outlines alone are really his. It is not likely we have lost much by the
repainting, for where the work has not been touched it has so perished as
to be hardly worth preserving, and we may think that what has been
repainted was in much the same state. This is the only chapel in which
Gaudenzio’s frescoes at Varallo have been much repainted. If those in
the Crucifixion and Magi chapels have been retouched they have taken
little harm; the frescoes in the church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie have
certainly not been touched, and are in such good preservation that it may
be questioned whether they ever looked much better than they do now. The
fine oil picture in the church of S. Gaudenzio has gone a little yellow
through the darkening of the oil, but is in a good state, and generally,
though no painter of the highest rank has been so much neglected, or
suffered more from the actual destruction of his works, yet for the most
part Gaudenzio has been spared the reckless restoration which is the most
cruel ill that can befall an artist.
CHAPEL NO. 41. THE ENTOMBMENT.
We have already seen that this was the first chapel with figures in it on
the Sacro Monte. Of the old eight wooden figures that it contained, two
are still on the mountain in a sort of vault adjacent to, or under, the
main church, and near the furnace in which those that superseded them
were baked. Six are in the Museum at Varallo. I saw them a few weeks
ago, not yet arranged, leaning up against the wall with very battered and
dilapidated glories; the recumbent Christ was standing more or less on
end, and the whole group was in a pathetic state of dismemberment that
will doubtless soon make way for a return to their earlier arrangement.
The figures are interesting, but it cannot be pretended that they are of
great value. They look very much as if they had been out somewhere the
night before.
Of the figures in the present chapel the less said the better.
REMAINING CHAPELS AND CHIESA MAGGIORE.
The chapel of St. Francis is open to the air, and contains nothing but an
altar, and a modern fresco of the death of the saint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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