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
The most important chapel is the Martyrdom of St. Eusebius, below the
sanctuary itself. The saint is supposed to have been martyred in front
of the church of St. Andrea at Vercelli. Some four or so of the figures
to the spectator’s right are modern restorations; among them, however,
there is a child of extreme sweetness and beauty, which must certainly be
by Tabachetti, looking up and clinging to the dress of its mother, who
has been restored, and is as commonplace as the child is the reverse.
There are two restored or rather entirely new priests close by the mother
and child, and near these is another new figure—a girl immediately to the
child’s right; this is so absurdly bad and out of proportion that it is
not easy to understand how even the restorer can have allowed himself to
make it. All the rest of the figures are by Tabachetti. A little behind
the mother and child, but more to the spectator’s right, and near to the
wall of the chapel, there stands a boy one of whose lower eyelids is
paralysed, and whose expression is one of fear and pain. This figure is
so free alike from exaggeration or shortcoming, that it is hard to praise
it too highly. Another figure in the background to the spectator’s
left—that of a goitred _crétin_ who is handing stones to one of the
stoners, has some of the same remarkably living look as is observable in
the two already referred to; so also has another man in a green
skull-cap, who is holding a small battle-axe and looking over the
stoner’s shoulders. Two of the stoners are very powerful figures. The
man on horseback, in the background, appears to be a portrait probably of
a benefactor. In spite of restoration, the work is still exceedingly
impressive. The figures behind the saint act well together, the crowd is
a crowd—a one in many, and a many in one—not, as with every one except
Tabachetti who has tried to do a crowd in sculpture, a mere collection of
units, that, whatever else they may be, are certainly not crowding one
another. The main drawback of the work is that the chapel is too small
for the subject—a matter over which Tabachetti probably had no control.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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