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
Both Fassola and Torrotti place this fresco on the outside wall of the
chapel of St. Francis, but Bordiga is probably right in saying it was on
the Entombment chapel. No trace of it remains, nor yet of the other
works by Gaudenzio, which all three writers agree were in the S.
Francesco chapel, though they must all have been some few years later
than the chapel itself. These consisted of portraits of Milano
Scarrognini with Father Beato Candido Ranzo Bernardino Caimi upon the
gospel, or right, side of the altar, and of Scarrognini’s wife and son
with Bernardino Caimi, on the epistle side. According to Bordiga,
Gaudenzio also painted a St. Anthony of Padua, and a St. Helena, one on
either side the grating. Inside the chapel over the altar was a painting
of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, also by Gaudenzio. This is the
only one of his works in or about the S. Francesco chapel which still
exists; it is now in the pinacoteca of the Museum at Varallo, but is not,
so far as I could judge of it, one of his best pictures. The other works
were in a decayed condition in 1703, when they were removed, and the
chapel was redecorated by Francesco Leva, a painter of Milan.
The Crucifixion chapel of Gaudenzio Ferrari was begun and finished
between 1520 and 1530. I have found three excellently written dates of
1529 scrawled upon the fresco background. One of them, “1529 Die 26
Octobre Johannes Antoninus,” is especially clear, and the other two leave
no doubt what year was intended. I have found no earlier date, but
should not be surprised if further search were more successful. I may
say in passing that it seemed to me as though some parts of the scar made
by the inscription had been filled with paint, while others had certainly
not—as though the work had been in parts retouched, not so very long ago.
I think this is so, but two or three to whom I showed what I took to be
the new colour were not convinced, so I must leave others to decide the
point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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