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
In the open cloister hard by is shown the wooden bed on which S. Carlo
lay when he came to visit the Sacro Monte, and the stone which is said to
be a facsimile of the one rolled in front of the Holy Sepulchre itself.
Many years ago I spent several weeks at Varallo sketching and painting on
the Sacro Monte. A most excellent and lovable old priest, now doubtless
long since dead, took rather a fancy to me, and used to implore me to
become a Catholic. One day he took me up to this stone and spoke long
and earnestly about it. What a marvellous miracle it was. There was the
stone; I could see it for myself. What a dumb but eloquent testimony was
it not offering; how could I account for such things? and more to the
same effect, all said obviously in good faith, and with no idea save that
of guiding me to the truth. I was powerless. I could not go into facts
or arguments—I could not be obstinate without getting something like his
consent—and he was instant in season and out of season in endeavouring to
get mine. At last I could stand it no longer, and said, “My dearest sir,
I am the son of an English clergyman who is himself the son of another
English clergyman; my father and mother are living. If you will tell me
that I am to hold my father born in more than common sin, to have
committed a crime in marrying my mother, and that I am to hold myself as
one who ought never to have been born, then I will accept what you have
said about that stone. Till then let me go my way, and you yours.” He
said not a word more, and never again approached the subject; the nearest
he ever went to it was to say that he liked to see me sketching about the
Sacro Monte, for it could do me nothing but good. I trust that I have
done it no harm.
The chapel representing the Magdalene at the feet of the risen Christ has
disappeared. It contained two statues only, and two prophets by
Gaudenzio were painted outside on the wall. It stood “_Sotto un auanzo
dei Portici antichi seguentemente al Sepolcro_.” It was probably a very
early work.
Through an arch under the raised portico or arcaded gallery are three
small ruined cells called now “Il Paradiso,” and numbered 43, 44, and 45;
of one of these Fassola tells us that it contained “many modern statues”
by Gaudenzio Sceti, and frescoes by Gianoli; they are all now mere
wrecks. There is no important work by Gaudenzio Sceti remaining on the
Sacro Monte, but there is a terra-cotta crucifix with a Virgin and a St.
John by him, of no great value, in the church of S. Gaudenzio. What
remains of his work on the Sacro Monte itself consists of statues of Sta.
Anna and the Virgin as a child upon her lap in the chapel or cell
numbered 43.
Chapel 44 need not detain us. What few remains of figures it contains
are uninteresting and ruined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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