Ex Voto

The chapel of St. Francis is open to the air, and contains nothing but an altar, and a modern fresco of the death of the saint.

Near it is the Holy Sepulchre, which is entered from a small cell in which there is a figure of the Magdalene, and from which the visitor must creep on hands and knees into the Sepulchre itself.  The figure of Christ is not actually in the Sepulchre, but can be seen through a window opening into the contiguous chapel, where it is over the altar.  The early writers say that there were also two angels by Gaudenzio (statue di Gaudenzio divoissime), but Bordiga says nothing of this.  The upper part of this building was the abode of Bernardino Caimi and his successors until the year 1577.

As for the Holy Sepulchre itself it is low and dark, which I have no doubt is the reason why I have neglected it on the occasions of each of my two latest visits to Varallo, and thus failed to reach the adjacent Oratory, which Bordiga says was erected about the year 1702.  Fassola and Torrotti wrote before this date, so that the angels mentioned by them as by Gaudenzio may have been removed when the present fabric was erected.  At any rate Bordiga speaks as though they were paintings by one Tarquinio Grassi and not sculptured figures at all.  Torrotti says that visitors to the Holy Sepulchre used to burn candles, tapers, and torches, each one according to his purse or piety, and that they did this not so much to see with as to pray.  “Here,” he continues, “the great S. Carlo spent his evenings agreeably” (spendeva gradevolmente le notti).  “Few,” he concludes drily, and perhaps with a shade of the same quiet irony that led the Psalmist to say what he did about “one” day in certain courts, “can leave it without feeling devoutly thankful.”  About the candles Fassola says that there was a kind of automatic arrangement for getting them like that whereby we can now buy butter-scotch or matches at the railway stations, by dropping a penny into a slot.  He says:-

“And as the figure of Christ can only be seen by the help of candles (for which reason all pilgrims whose means permit are accustomed to burn them, being naturally prompted thereto each one according to his faith)—­by throwing money into a hole wherein the same candles lie, each pilgrim can be made quite comfortable, and contented.”

[“Gettando il denaro per un buco dove stanno le medesime candelette, commodamente puo restar ogni divoto contento.”]

“The mercies vouchsafed here,” continues the same writer; “are innumerable—­in all parts may be seen votive pictures both old and recent.”

In the open cloister hard by is shown the wooden bed on which S. Carlo lay when he came to visit the Sacro Monte, and the stone which is said to be a facsimile of the one rolled in front of the Holy Sepulchre itself.  Many years ago I spent several weeks at Varallo sketching and painting on the Sacro Monte.  A most excellent and lovable old priest, now doubtless long since dead, took rather a fancy to me, and used to implore me to become a Catholic.  One day he took me up to this stone and spoke long and earnestly about it.  What a marvellous miracle it was.  There was the stone; I could see it for myself.  What a dumb but eloquent testimony was it not offering; how could I account for such things? and more to the same effect, all said obviously in good faith, and with no idea save that of guiding me to the truth.  I was powerless.  I could not go into facts or arguments—­I could not be obstinate without getting something like his consent—­and he was instant in season and out of season in endeavouring to get mine.  At last I could stand it no longer, and said, “My dearest sir, I am the son of an English clergyman who is himself the son of another English clergyman; my father and mother are living.  If you will tell me that I am to hold my father born in more than common sin, to have committed a crime in marrying my mother, and that I am to hold myself as one who ought never to have been born, then I will accept what you have said about that stone.  Till then let me go my way, and you yours.”  He said not a word more, and never again approached the subject; the nearest he ever went to it was to say that he liked to see me sketching about the Sacro Monte, for it could do me nothing but good.  I trust that I have done it no harm.

The chapel representing the Magdalene at the feet of the risen Christ has disappeared.  It contained two statues only, and two prophets by Gaudenzio were painted outside on the wall.  It stood “Sotto un auanzo dei Portici antichi seguentemente al Sepolcro.”  It was probably a very early work.

Through an arch under the raised portico or arcaded gallery are three small ruined cells called now “Il Paradiso,” and numbered 43, 44, and 45; of one of these Fassola tells us that it contained “many modern statues” by Gaudenzio Sceti, and frescoes by Gianoli; they are all now mere wrecks.  There is no important work by Gaudenzio Sceti remaining on the Sacro Monte, but there is a terra-cotta crucifix with a Virgin and a St. John by him, of no great value, in the church of S. Gaudenzio.  What remains of his work on the Sacro Monte itself consists of statues of Sta.  Anna and the Virgin as a child upon her lap in the chapel or cell numbered 43.

Chapel 44 need not detain us.  What few remains of figures it contains are uninteresting and ruined.

I have already spoken of chapel No. 45, which once represented an entombment of the Madonna, as in all probability the oldest building, and as certainly containing the oldest, and by no means least interesting frescoes on the Sacro Monte.  There is nothing inside the chapel except these frescoes, but outside it there are many scrawls, of which the earliest I have noticed is 1520—­the supposed 1437 being certainly 1537.  The writer of one of these scrawls has added the words “fuit hic” to his signature as John Van Eyck has done to the signature of his portrait of John Arnolfini and his wife.  I have found this addition of “fuit hic” in a signature of a certain “Cardinalis de al . . . ” who scratched his name “1389 die 19 Mag” on a fresco to the left of the statue of S. Zenone in the church S. Zenone at Verona.  On a fresco in the very interesting castle of Fenis in the valley of Aosta, to which I hope to return in another work, there is scratched “Hic sponsus cum sponsa fuit 1790 25 May,” the “May” being an English May; Jones and I thought the writer had begun to add “London” but had stopped.  The “fuit hic,” therefore, of John Van Eyck’s signature should not be translated as we might be tempted to wish to translate it, “This was John Van Eyck.”

Returning to the Sacro Monte, there remains only the Chiesa Vecchia, removed at the end of the last century to make room for the building that was till lately the “casa degli esercizi,” or house in which the priests on the mountain performed their spiritual exercises.  This is now let out in apartments during the summer, and is called the Casino.  The old sacristy, now used as the archivio of the Sacro Monte, still remains, and contains a fresco by Lanini, that bears strong traces of the influence of his master Gaudenzio.  Besides the impress of Christ’s foot and the Assumption of the Virgin, the church contained an Annunciation by Gaudenzio and frescoes of St. Catherine and St. Cecilia; the Cupola was also decorated by him.  This work was undertaken in 1530, the greater angels being by Gaudenzio and the smaller by Lanini and Fermo Stella.  These frescoes all perished when the church was pulled down.

The present Chiesa Maggiore was begun on the 9th of June 1614—­ D’Enrico’s design having, so Bordiga says, been approved on the 1st of April in that year.  Fassola says that in 1671 the only parts completed were the Choir and Cupola, the whole body of the church being left unfinished.  Bordiga speaks of the church as having been finished in 1649, in which year, on the feast of the Birth of the Virgin, her image was taken from the old church and placed in the new, so when Fassola says “unfinished” he must refer to decoration only.  The steps leading up to the church and the unfinished columns were erected in 1825 from designs by Marchese Don Luigi Cagnola, the architect of the Arco della Pace at Milan.  It was ere long found that the stone selected was unreliable, so that all must be done over again; the work has, therefore, been suspended.

The Cupola is covered with about 140 modelled figures of angels, by Dionigi Bussola and Giambattista Volpino, Milanese sculptors, who worked from designs made by Antonio Tempesta, a Florentine.  They did this work about the year 1660.  The brothers Montalti painted the frescoes, some more highly coloured groups being added by Antonio Cucchi of Milan in 1750.

In the crypt there is a sumptuous shrine containing the statue of the Madonna, said to have been made by St. Luke.  This was erected in 1854, but on the night between the 4th and 5th of October in the same year the crown was stolen from the Virgin’s head, and in the following year there was a solemn expiatory function, with festivities extending over three days, in order to celebrate the replacing of the stolen crown by a new one.

It cannot be said that any of the works of art now in the church are of considerable interest, but an important work of art was nevertheless produced in it at the celebration of the fourth centenary of the birth of Gaudenzio Ferrari, which was held in 1885.  I refer to the Mass by Cagnoni, which was here performed for the first time, and which showed that the best traditions of old Italian ecclesiastical music are still occasionally adhered to.  I was present at the production of the work, and have heard no modern Italian music that has pleased me nearly as much.  I ventured to ask the Maestro for the baton he had used in conducting it, and am proud to keep it as a memorial of a fine performance of a very fine work.  The baton is several old newspapers neatly folded up and covered with silk.