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 Magi chapel must be assigned to some date between the years 1530 and
1539—I should say probably to about 1538, but I will return to this later
on. Torrotti says that some of the figures on the Christ taken for the
last time before Pilate (chapel No. 32) are by Gaudenzio, as also some
paintings that were preserved when the Palazzo di Pilato was built, but I
can see no sign of either one or the other now; nevertheless it is likely
enough that several figures—transformed as we shall presently see that
d’Enrico or his assistants knew very well how to transform them—are doing
duty in the Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, and Ecce Homo chapels. So cunningly
did the workmen of that time disguise a figure when they wanted to alter
its character and action that it would be no easy matter to find out
exactly what was done; if they could turn an Eve, as they did, into a
very passable Roman soldier assisting at the capture of Christ, they
could make anything out of anything. A figure was a figure, and was not
to be thrown away lightly.
Soon after the completion of the Magi chapel the work flagged in
consequence of the wars then devastating the provinces of North Italy;
nevertheless by the middle of the sixteenth century we learn from
Torrotti that some nineteen chapels had been completed.
It is idle to spend much time in guessing which these chapels were, when
Caccia’s work, published in 1565, is sure to be found some day and will
settle the matter authoritatively, but the reader will not be far wrong
if he sees the Sacro Monte by the year 1550 as consisting of the
following chapels: Adam and Eve, Annunciation, Salutation (?), Magi,
Adoration of the Infant Jesus by the Shepherds, Adoration by Joseph and
Mary, Circumcision, (but not the present figures nor fresco background),
Last Supper, Agony in the Garden, Capture, Flagellation, Crowning with
thorns (?), Christ taken for the last time before Pilate, the Original
journey to Calvary, Fainting Madonna, Crucifixion, Entombment, Ascension,
and the old church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary now removed.
There were probably one or two others, but there cannot have been many.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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