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 sculptor’s grandfather, Perpète de Wespin, was the first to take the
sobriquet of Tabaguet, and though in the deeds which I have seen at Namur
the name is always given as “de Wespin,” yet the addition of “dit
Tabaguet” shows that this last was the name in current use. His father
and mother, and a sister Jacquelinne, under age, appear to have all died
in 1587. Jean de Wespin, the sculptor, is mentioned in a deed of that
date as “expatrié,” and he has a “gardien” or “tuteur,” who is to take
charge of his inheritance, appointed by the Court, as though he were for
some reason unable to appoint one for himself. This lends colour to
Fassola’s and Torrotti’s statement that he lost his reason about 1586 or
1587. I think it more likely, however, considering that he was alive and
doing admirable work some fifty years after 1590, that he was the victim
of some intrigue than that he was ever really mad. At any rate, about
1587 he appears to have been unable to act for himself.
If his sister Jacquelinne died under age in 1587, Jean is not likely to
have been then much more than thirty, so we may conclude that he was born
about 1560. There is some six or eight years’ work by him remaining at
Varallo, and described as finished in the 1586 edition of Caccia.
Tabachetti, therefore, must have left home very young, and probably went
straight to Varallo. In 1586 or 1587 we lose sight of him till 1590 or
1591, when he went to Crea, where he did about forty chapels—almost all
of which have perished.
On again visiting Milan I found in the Biblioteca Nazionale a guide-book
to the Sacro Monte, which was not in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and of
whose existence I had never heard. This guide-book was published in 1606
and reissued in 1610; it mentions all changes since 1590, and even
describes chapels not yet in existence, but it says nothing about
Tabachetti’s First Vision of St. Joseph chapel—the only one of his
chapels not given as completed in the 1590 edition of Caccia. I had
assumed too hastily that this chapel was done just after the 1590 edition
of Caccia had been published, and just before Tabachetti left for Crea in
1590 or 1591, whereas it now appears that it was done about 1610, during
a short visit paid by the sculptor to Varallo some twenty years after he
had left it.
Finding that Tabachetti returned to Varallo about 1610, I was able to
understand two or three figures in the Ecce Homo chapel which I had long
thought must be by Tabachetti, but had not ventured to ascribe to him,
inasmuch as I believed him to have finally left Varallo some twenty years
before the Ecce Homo chapel was made. I have now no doubt that he lent a
hand to Giovanni D’Enrico with this chapel, in which he has happily left
us his portrait signed with a V (doubtless standing for W, a letter which
the Italians have not got), cut on the hat before baking, and invisible
from outside the chapel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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