Ex Voto

Before going through the various chapels seriatim, it may be well to give a short account of three out of the four most interesting figures among the numerous artists who worked on the Sacro Monte.  By these I mean, of course, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Tabachetti, Giovanni d’Enrico, and the sculptor, whoever he may have been, of the Massacre of the Innocents chapel.  I take my account of Gaudenzio chiefly from Colombo’s admirable work, and from the not less excellent notice by Signor Tonetti, that appeared in the “Museo Storico ed Artistico Valsesiano” for July and August 1885.

Gaudenzio Ferrari was born, according to the general belief, in 1484, but Colombo shows reasons for thinking that this date is some four or five years too late.  His father was named Antonio Lanfranco or Franchino. {7} He too was a painter, but nothing is known of him or his works beyond the fact that he lived at Valduggia, where his son Gaudenzio was born, married a woman whose surname was Vinzio, and was dead by 1510.  Gaudenzio in his early years several times signed his pictures with his mother’s name, calling himself Vincius, De Vincio, or De Vince.

He is generally said to have studied first under Gerolamo Giovenone of Vercelli, but this painter was not born till 1491, and we have the authority of Lomazzo for saying that Gaudenzio’s chief instructor was Stefano Scotto, a painter of Milan, who kept a school that was more or less a rival to that of Leonardo da Vinci.  I have myself no doubt that Gaudenzio Ferrari has given Scotto’s portrait in at least three of the works he has left behind him at Varallo, but will return to this subject when I come to deal with the various places in which these portraits appear.  His first works of importance, or at least the earliest that remain to us, are probably in or in the immediate vicinity of Varallo; but little is known of his early years and work, beyond what is comprised in the three pages that form the second chapter of Colombo’s book.  There is an early ancona at La Rocca, near Varallo, another in the parocchia of Gattinara, and possibly a greatly damaged Pieta in the cloisters of Sta.  Maria delle Grazie at Varallo may be, as it is said to be, an early work by Gaudenzio.  Besides these, the wreck of the frescoes on the Pieta chapel on the Sacro Monte, and other works on the same site, now lost, belong to his earlier years.

Some believe that about the year 1506 he travelled to Perugia, Florence, and Rome, where he made the acquaintance of Raphael, and perhaps studied under Perugino, but Colombo has shown on what very slender, if any, grounds this belief is based, and evidently inclines to the belief that Gaudenzio never went to Rome, nor indeed, probably, outside Lombardy at all.  The only one of Gaudenzio’s works in which I can myself see anything that may perhaps be called a trace of Umbrian influence, is in the fresco of Christ disputing with the Doctors, in the chapel of Sta.  Margherita, in the Church of Sta.  Maria delle Grazie at Varallo.  This fresco, as Signor Arienta has pointed out to me, contains a strong reminiscence of the architectural background in Raphael’s school of Athens; it was painted—­so far as an illegible hieroglyphic signature can be taken as read, and so far as internal evidence of style may be relied upon, somewhere about the year.  If Gaudenzio was for the moment influenced by Raphael, he soon shook off the influence and formed a style of his own, from which he did not depart, except as enriching and enlarging his manner with advancing experience.  Moreover, Colombo (p. 75) points out that the works by Raphael to which Gaudenzio’s Disputa is supposed to present an analogy, were not finished till 1511, and are hence probably later than Gaudenzio’s fresco.  Perhaps both painters drew from some common source.

In 1508 he was at Vercelli, and on the 26th of July signed a contract to paint a picture for the church of S. Anna.  He is described in the deed as “Gaudentius de Varali.”  He had by this time married his first wife, by whom he had two children, Gerolamo and Margherita, born in 1508 and 1512.  In 1510 he undertook to paint an altarpiece for the main church at Arona, and completed it in 1511, signing the work “Magister Gaudentius de Vince, filius quondam magistri Lanfranchi habitator vallis Siccidae.”  In 1513 he painted the magnificent series of frescoes in the church of Sta.  Maria delle Grazie at Varallo, signing the work and dating it, this time more legibly than he had done his earlier work in the chapel of St. Margaret.  In July 1514 he signed a contract to paint an altarpiece for the Basilica of S. Gaudenzio at Novara.  It was to be completed within eighteen months from the date of the contract and doubtless was so, but Gaudenzio found a good deal of difficulty in getting his money, which was not paid in full till 1521.  He is occasionally met with at Novara and Vercelli between the years 1515 and 1524, but his main place of abode was Varallo.

No date can be positively assigned for his great Crucifixion chapel on the Sacro Monte, but it belongs probably to the years 1524-1528.  I have already said that I can find no dates scrawled on the walls earlier than 1529.  Such dates may be found yet, but if they are not found, it may be assumed that the chapel was not thrown open to the public much before that year.  There is still a little relievo employed in the fresco background, but not nearly so much as in the church of Sta.  Maria delle Grazie, and the increase of freedom is so evident that it is difficult not to suppose an interval of a good many years between the two works.  I gather that by the year 1520 Gaudenzio had abandoned the use of gold and of relievo in painting, but he may have made an exception in the case of a work which was to consist both of sculpture and painting; and there is indeed a good deal to be said in favour of relievo in such a case, as helping to unite the sculptured and painted portions of the work.  Even in the Magi chapel, the frescoes of which are several years later than those in the Crucifixion chapel, there are still a few bosses of relievo in the horses’ trappings.  The date usually assigned to the Crucifixion chapel is 1524, and, in default of more precise knowledge, we shall do well to adhere to the date 1524-1528 already suggested.

About 1524 Gaudenzio painted a picture for the Sacristy of the Cathedral of Novara, and Signor Tonetti says that the very beautiful picture behind the high altar in the church of S. Gaudenzio at Varallo is generally assigned to about the same period.  He goes on to say that in 1526 Gaudenzio was certainly working at his native village of Valduggia, where, in 1524 or 1525, a chapel had been erected in honour of S. Rocco, who it was supposed had kept the Valsesia free from the plague that had devastated other parts of Italy.  This chapel Gaudenzio decorated with frescoes that have now disappeared, but whose former existence is recorded in an inscription placed in 1793, when the chapel was restored.  The inscription runs:  “Quod populus a peste denfensori erigebat an MDXXVI Gaudentius Ferrarius patritius ex voto pictura decorabat,” &c.

In 1528 he transferred his abode to Vercelli, and about the same year married again.  His second wife was a widow who had a boy of ten years old by Giovanni Antonio del Olmo, of Bergamo.  Her name was Maria Mattia della Foppa; she came from Morbegno in the Valtellina, and was of the same family as Vincenzo Foppa, the reputed founder of the Milanese school of painting.  In 1532 he married his daughter Margherita to Domenico Pertegalle, surnamed Festa, of Crevola near Varallo—­he and his son Gerolamo undertaking to give her a dowry of 500 lire imperiale, payable in four years, and secured by mortgage on Gaudenzio’s house in Varallo.

In 1536 he painted the cupola of the church of the Madonna dei Miracoli at Saronno; he then returned to Vercelli, but his abode and movements are somewhat obscure till 1539, when it is certain that he left Varallo for ever, settled in Milan, and died there between the years 1546 and 1549.  He does not appear to have continued to reside in Vercelli after 1536; we may perhaps, therefore, think that he returned for a time to Varallo, and that the frescoes on the Magi chapel should be given to some date between 1536 and 1539.  They are certainly several years later than those in the Crucifixion chapel; but I will return to these frescoes when I come to the Magi chapel itself.

In 1539 he lost his son Gerolamo, and Colombo ascribes his departure from Varallo to grief; but we cannot forget that in the year 1538 there broke out a violent quarrel between the ecclesiastics of the Sacro Monte and the lay governors of Varallo.  Fassola says that in 1530 Gio.  Ant.  Scarrognini, grandson of Milano Scarrognini, and some time afterwards Gio.  Angiolo Draghetti, were made Fabbricieri.  The election of this last was opposed by the ecclesiastics, who wished to see certain persons elected who were already proctors of the convent, but the Vicini held out, and carried the day.  Party feeling ran so high, and the Fathers wished to have such absolute control over the keys of the various money boxes attached to the chapels, and over all other matters, that it may well have been difficult for Gaudenzio to avoid coming into collision with one or both of these contending parties; matters came to a head in the year 1538, and his leaving Varallo for ever about this time may, perhaps, be referred to his finding himself in an intolerable position, as well as to the death of his son; but, however this may be, he sold his house on the 5th of August, 1539, for seven hundred lire imperiali, and for the rest of his life resided in Milan, where he executed several important works, for which I must refer my readers to the pages of Colombo.

The foregoing meagre notice is all that my space allows me to give concerning the life of this great master.  I will conclude it with a quotation from Signor Morelli which I take from Sir Henry Layard’s recent edition of Kugler’s Handbook of Painting (vol. ii. p. 424).  Signor Morelli is quoted as saying —

“Gaudenzio Ferrari is inferior to very few of his contemporaries, and occasionally, as in some of those groups of men and women in the great Crucifixion at Varallo, he might challenge comparison with Raphael himself.”

It would be a bad business for Raphael if he did.  Gaudenzio Ferrari was what Raphael is commonly believed to have been.  I do not mean, that he was the prince of painters—­such expressions are always hyperbolical; there has been no prince of painters; I mean that Gaudenzio Ferrari’s feeling was profound, whereas Raphael’s was at best only skin deep.  Nevertheless Signor Morelli is impressed with Ferrari’s greatness, and places him, “for all in all, as regards inventive genius, dramatic life, and picturesqueness * * far above Luini.”  Bernardino Luini must stand so very high that no one can be placed far above him; nevertheless, it is hard not to think that Gaudenzio Ferrari was upon the whole the stronger man.