Ex Voto

For my account of Giovanni D’Enrico I turn to Signor Galloni’s “Uomini e fatti celebri di Valle Sesia.”  He was second of three brothers, Melchiorre, Giovanni, and Antonio, commonly called Tanzio, who were born at the German-speaking village of Alagna, that stands at the head of the Val Sesia.  Signor Galloni says that the elder brother, Melchiorre, painted the frescoes in the Temptation chapel in 1594, and the Last Judgment on the facciata of the parish church at Riva in 1597.

The house occupied by the family of D’Enrico was, as I gather from a note communicated to Signor Galloni by Cav.  Don Farinetti of Alagna, in the fraction of Alagna called Giacomolo, where a few years ago a last descendant of the family was still residing.  The house is of wood, old and black with smoke; on the wooden gallery or lobby that runs in front of it, and above the low and narrow doorways, there is an inscription or verse of the Bible, “Allein Gott Ehere,” dated 1609.  The small oratory hard by is said to have been also the property of the D’Enrico family, and in the ancona of the little altar there is a picture representing the Virgin of not inconsiderable merit, with a beautiful gilded frame in excellent preservation.  On the background of this picture there is the stemma of the D’Enrico family, and an inscription in Latin bearing the names of John and Eva D’Enrico.

The exact dates of the births of the three brothers are unknown, but the eldest and youngest were described in a certificate of good character, dated February 11, 1600, as “juvenes bonae vocis, conditionis et famae,” so that if we assume Melchiorre to have been born in 1575, {11} Giovanni in 1580, and Antonio in 1585, we shall, in no case, be more than five years or so in error.  I own to being able to see little merit in any of Melchiorre’s work, of which the reader will find a sample in the frescoes behind the old Adam and Eve, which is given to face p. 121, but it is believed that he for the most part painted the terra-cotta figures, rather than backgrounds.  Nor do I like the work of Tanzio—­which may be seen, perhaps, to the best advantage in the Herod chapel.  Tanzio, however, was a stronger man than Melchiorre.  Giovanni was incomparably the ablest of the three brothers, and it is to him alone that I will ask the reader to devote attention.

Signor Galloni calls Giovanni D’Enrico a pupil of Tabachetti, probably following Bordiga, but I have not seen the evidence on which this generally received opinion is based; Tabachetti had finally left Varallo by 1591, when Giovanni D’Enrico was little more than a child, and though he may have been sent to work under Tabachetti at Crea, I have not come across anything to show this was so.  He was an architect as well as sculptor, and is believed to have made the modification of Pellegrino Tibaldi’s designs that was ultimately adopted for the Palazzo di Pilato, Caiaphas, and Herod chapels.  He was also architect of the Chiesa Maggiore on the Sacro Monte, his design having been approved April 1, 1614.  He is believed to have done a Madonna and child, a St. Rocco, and a St. Sebastian in the parish church at Alagna; he also sent many figures away, some of which may possibly be found in the disused chapels of Graglia, if indeed these contain anything at all.  He died at Montrigone near Borgosesia in 1644, while superintending the work of his pupil and collaborateur Giacomo Ferro, who, it is said, has placed his master’s portrait near the bed of S. Anna in his chapel of the Birth of the Virgin (?) at Montrigone.  Others say that the figure in question does not represent D’Enrico, and that his portrait is found in a niche in the chapel itself, but Signor Galloni assures us that there is nothing but tradition in favour of either view.  Giacomo Ferro appears to have been his only pupil and his only collaborateur.  There can, I think, be little doubt that the greater part of the work generally ascribed to D’Enrico is really by Giacomo Ferro, and the uncertainty as to what figures are actually by D’Enrico himself makes it very difficult to form a just opinion about his genius.  Some chapels are given to him, as for example the Flagellation and Crowning with Thorns, which are mentioned as completed in the 1586 edition of Caccia, when D’Enrico was at most a child.  True, he may have remodelled these chapels, but I have not yet met with evidence that he actually did so, though I dare say such evidence may exist without my knowing it.

In those in which he was undoubtedly assisted by Giacomo Ferro, as for example the Caiaphas, Herod, four Pilate, and Nailing to the Cross chapels, with possibly the Ecce Homo, perhaps the safest rule will be to give the few really excellent figures that are to be found in each of them to D’Enrico himself and to ascribe all the inferior work, of which unfortunately there is too much, to Giacomo Ferro.  That the assistance rendered by him was on a very large scale may be gathered from the fact that there was a deed drawn up between him and his master whereby he was to receive half the money that was paid to D’Enrico,—­a quasi partnership indeed seems to have existed between the two sculptors.  This deed is referred to by Signor Galloni on page 178 of his “Uomini e Fatti,” and on the same page he gives us an extract from a lawsuit between Giacomo Ferro and the town of Varallo which gives us a curious insight into the manner in which the artists of the Sacro Monte were paid.  From a proces-verbal in connection with this suit Signor Galloni quotes the following extract:-

“And further the said deputies allege that in the accounts rendered by the said master Giovanni D’Enrico in respect of the pontifical thrones in the Caiaphas and Nailing to the Cross chapels, these have been valued at the rate of four statues for each several throne and horse, whereas it appears from old accounts rendered by other statuaries that they have been hitherto charged only at the rate of three statues for each throne and horse.  Wherefore the said deputies claim to deduct the overcharge of one statue for each horse and throne, which being thirteen at the rate of 10 and a quarter scudi for each figure, would give a total deduction of 132 and a half scudi.”

It appears in another part of the same proces-verbal that Giovanni D’Enrico had been paid in 1640 the sum of 4240 lire and 8 soldi.

Giacomo Ferro and his brother Antonio were Giovanni D’Enrico’s heirs, from which it would appear that he either died unmarried, or left no children.

To say that D’Enrico will compare with Tabachetti would be an obvious exaggeration, and, indeed, there are only very few figures on the Sacro Monte about which we can feel certain that they are by him at all.  The Caiaphas, Herod, Laughing Boys in the Herod chapel, and the Man with the Two Children in the Ecce Homo chapel cannot, I think, be given to any one else, but at this moment I do not call to mind more than some fourteen or fifteen figures out of the three hundred or so that are ascribed to him, about which we can be as certain that they are by D’Enrico as we can be that most of those given to Tabachetti and Gaudenzio are actually by them.  For not only have we to reckon with Giacomo Ferro, who, if he had half the pay, we may be sure did not less than half the figures, and probably very much more, but we must reckon with the figures taken from older chapels when reconstructed, as in D’Enrico’s time was the case with several.  What became of the figures in Gaudenzio Ferrari’s original Journey to Calvary chapel, and in other works by him that were cancelled when the Palazzo di Pilato chapel was built?  It is not likely they were destroyed if by any hook or crook they could be made to do duty in some other shape; more probably they are most of them still existing up and down D’Enrico’s various chapels, but so doctored, if the expression may be pardoned, that Gaudenzio himself would not know them.  In the Ecce Homo chapel we can say with confidence that the extreme figure to the left is by Gaudenzio, and has been taken from some one of his chapels now lost; we are able to detect this by an accident, but there are other figures in the same chapel and not a few elsewhere, about which we can have no confidence that they have not been taken from some earlier chapel either by Gaudenzio or some one else.  What, then, with these figures, and what with Giacomo Ferro, it is not easy to say what D’Enrico did or did not do.

The intercalated figures have been fitted into the work with admirable skill, nevertheless they do not form part of design, and make it want the unity observable in the work of Tabachetti and Gaudenzio.  They have been lugged into the composition, and no matter how skilful their introduction, are soon felt, as in the case of the Vecchietto, to have no business where they are.  Moreover, D’Enrico shows his figures off, which Tabachetti never does:  the result is that in his chapels each figure has its attention a good deal drawn to the desirableness of neither being itself lost sight of, nor impeding the view of its neighbours.  This is fatal, and though Giacomo Ferro is doubtless more practically guilty in the matter than D’Enrico, yet D’Enrico is the responsible author of the work, and must bear the blame accordingly.  Standing once with Signor Pizetta of Varallo, before D’Enrico’s great Nailing of Christ to the Cross chapel, I asked him casually how he thought it compared with Tabachetti’s Journey to Calvary.  He replied “Questo non sacrifica niente,” meaning that Tabachetti thought of the action much and but little of whether or no the actors got in each other’s way, whereas D’Enrico was mainly bent on making his figures steer clear of one another.  Thus his chapels want the concert and unity of action that give such life to Tabachetti’s.  Nevertheless, in spite of the defect above referred to, it is impossible to deny that the sculptor of the Herod and Caiaphas figures was a man of very rare ability, nor can the general verdict which assigns him the third place among the workers on the Sacro Monte be reasonably disputed.  But this third place must be given rather in respect of quantity than quality, for in dramatic power and highly-wrought tragic action he is inferior to the sculptor, whoever he may be, of the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, to which I will return when I come to the chapel in question.

I may say in passing that Cicognara, Lubke, and Perkins have all omitted to mention Giovanni D’Enrico as a sculptor, though Nagler mentions his two brothers as painters.  Nagler gives the two brothers D’Enrico as all bearing the patronymic Tanzio, which I am told is in reality only a corruption of the Christian name of the third brother.  Zani mentions Giovanni D’Enrico as well as his two brothers, and calls him “celebre,” but he calls all the three brothers “Tanzii, Tanzi, Tanzio, or Tanzo.”