Ex Voto

The remaining chapels are few in number, and, whatever they may once have been, unimportant in character.  The first is

Chapel No. 40.  The pieta.

The three preceding chapels are supposed to be on Mount Calvary, and from them we descend by a flight of stone steps to the level of the piazza.  Immediately on reaching this we come upon the Pieta.  We have seen that this chapel originally contained Gaudenzio’s Journey to Calvary, and that the fresco background still, in so far as it is not destroyed, treats this subject, while the modelled figures represent the Pieta.  Of Gaudenzio’s original work Caccia says:-

“Come fu Christo de’ panni spogliato,
Montando il Monte poi Calvario detto,
Nel mezzo a manigoldi mal trattato,
Contemplar possi con pietoso affetto,

Seguito da Maria e da l’amato
Discepolo di lui, et e l’effetto
Sculto si bene e doitamente fatto
Che sembra vero e non del ver ritratto.”

“Per una scala asceso al Sacro Monte
Si entra nel piu d’ogn’ altro sacro tempio,” &c.

The words “montando il monte poi,” &c., must refer to a supposed ascent on the part of Christ Himself, for Gaudenzio’s work was on a level with Tabachetti’s present Journey to Calvary which Caccia has just described, and Caccia goes on to say that from Gaudenzio’s chapel (the present Pieta) one “ascends by a staircase to” the most sacred chapel of all—­the Crucifixion—­as one does at present.  That the present Pieta and the adjacent Entombment chapels were once one chapel, may be seen by any one who examines the vaulting inside the first-named chapel.  Signor Arienta pointed this out to me, and at the same time called my attention to the fact that Gaudenzio’s fresco on the wall facing the spectator does not turn the corner and join on with the subject that fills the left-hand wall.  A flag and a horse are cut off, and the rest of them is not seen.  I sometimes question whether the original wooden-figured entombment was in the chapel in which the present modern figures are seen, but it probably was so.

There was also a fainting Madonna mentioned in the prose part of
Caccia as a work by itself and described as follows:-

“Come la Madonna e tramortita vedendo N.S. condotto a morte.”

This is not referred to in the poetical part, and must have been a mere cell occupied by a single figure.  No doubt it was seen through the window that is still approached by two steps on the south side of the present Pieta, and the space it occupied has been thrown into the present work.

I do not know when Gaudenzio’s Journey to Calvary was dispersed, but it was some time, doubtless, between 1600 and 1644.  It is puzzling to note that the Pieta appears in the plan of 1671 as situated rather in the part of the building now occupied by the Entombment than by the Pieta, while the 39 that should mark the site of the Entombment does not appear; but this is perhaps only an error in the plan itself.  I find, however, the attempt to understand the changes that have taken place here so difficult that I shall abandon it and will return to the present aspect of the work.

Torrotti says that some of the statues in the present chapel are by Gaudenzio, which they are not.  Fassola gives them all to Giovanni D’Enrico; Bordiga speaks of the work in the highest terms, but for my own part I do not admire it, nor, I am afraid, can I accept the more fresh-looking parts of the fresco background as by Gaudenzio.  I do not doubt that his work has been in these parts repainted, and that the outlines alone are really his.  It is not likely we have lost much by the repainting, for where the work has not been touched it has so perished as to be hardly worth preserving, and we may think that what has been repainted was in much the same state.  This is the only chapel in which Gaudenzio’s frescoes at Varallo have been much repainted.  If those in the Crucifixion and Magi chapels have been retouched they have taken little harm; the frescoes in the church of Sta.  Maria delle Grazie have certainly not been touched, and are in such good preservation that it may be questioned whether they ever looked much better than they do now.  The fine oil picture in the church of S. Gaudenzio has gone a little yellow through the darkening of the oil, but is in a good state, and generally, though no painter of the highest rank has been so much neglected, or suffered more from the actual destruction of his works, yet for the most part Gaudenzio has been spared the reckless restoration which is the most cruel ill that can befall an artist.

Chapel No. 41.  The entombment.

We have already seen that this was the first chapel with figures in it on the Sacro Monte.  Of the old eight wooden figures that it contained, two are still on the mountain in a sort of vault adjacent to, or under, the main church, and near the furnace in which those that superseded them were baked.  Six are in the Museum at Varallo.  I saw them a few weeks ago, not yet arranged, leaning up against the wall with very battered and dilapidated glories; the recumbent Christ was standing more or less on end, and the whole group was in a pathetic state of dismemberment that will doubtless soon make way for a return to their earlier arrangement.  The figures are interesting, but it cannot be pretended that they are of great value.  They look very much as if they had been out somewhere the night before.

Of the figures in the present chapel the less said the better.