San Carlo Borromeo
Loading...
Authors
Giuseppe Arrigoni
Date
Type
Image
Language
Keyword
Carlo Borromeo , Prayer , Garden , Gethsemane , Sepulcher , Tomb
Alternative Title
Abstract
This terracotta sculpture was made in 1722 by Giuseppe Arrigoni (dates unknown). It was displayed in a niche beside the Oratory of the Holy Sepulcher, which was added onto the Sepulcher Chapel (Forty-Three) in 1699 - 1701. The sculpture was protected from the elements by the portico that wraps around the Oratory, but it was not counted as one of the Sacro Monte's chapels until the mid-twentieth century. Carlo and Franco Bacchetta, two brothers from Valsesia, renovated the Oratory in 1945. They added a new doorway in the north wall to allow direct access into the small sanctuary from the piazza. Formerly visitors had to pass through the Sepulcher Chapel to enter the Oratory and depart through the same low portal. The sculpture was moved to accommodate this new entrance, and a new chapel was built facing the doorway to house this figure of San Carlo. The Bacchetta brothers frescoed the chapel's interior with painted tapestries and covered the ceiling with trompe l'oeil coffers. They painted a large angel carrying an inscription in the lunette above the far wall. The chapel also contains a wooden bed that San Carlo it believed to have used during his final pilgrimage to Varallo in 1584. This relic of San Carlo's devotion to the Sacro Monte was moved out of its former home in the Franciscan's convent sometime before 1830, when Gaudenzio Bordiga describes it alongside Arrigoni's image of the saint outside Chapel Forty-Three. Carlo's biographers, including Carlo Bascapè and Giovanni Pietro Giussano, often remarked that the Holy Sepulcher (Forty-Three) and The Oration in the Garden (Twenty-One) were the saint's favorite chapels at Varallo. In 1604, Bishop Bascapè had instructed the d'Enrico brothers to paint a portrait of San Carlo inside Chapel Twenty-One. The fresco was replaced by a sculpture of the Saint modeled by Giovanni Battista Bernero in 1776. Carlo Borromeo had a key role in promoting Varallo's popularity throughout the State of Milan due to his own devotion to the site. He is believed to have weighed in on many of Galeazzo Alessi's proposed changes to Varallo in the late fifteen-sixties and seemed poised to consult one of his favorite architects, Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527 - 1596), on some elements of the project before his death in 1584. His final pilgrimage to Varallo became especially central to the saint's hagiography and a model for future visitors. According to Giussano, the archbishop would fast and meditate on certain scenes during the day and visit the corresponding chapels by candlelight each night. Carlo's spiritual exercises were guided by his Jesuit confessor Father Francesco Adorno. / Varallo was the first Sacro Monte in Northern Italy. The collection of chapels on the hilltop overlooking Varallo was established by Bernardino Caimi (before 1450 - 1499 or 1500) as a way of recreating the sights and experiences of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He organized the chapels according to their Holy Land geography and incorporated architectural details from the pilgrimage churches corresponding to each scene. Caimi chose Varallo to be the site of his New Jerusalem in 1481, he received papal permission to begin collecting donations in 1486, and he is believed to have overseen the project from 1491, when the first chapel was finished, until his death. Different writers have counted each of these dates as the year of the Sacro Monte founding. Many of the early chapels were decorated by Gaudenzio Ferrari (c. 1480 - 1546), who was born nearby and gained a reputation during his lifetime as one of the leading painters in Lombardy. Saint Carlo Borromeo (1538 - 1584) visited the Sacro Monte multiple times while he was Archbishop of Milan (1564 - 1584). Carlo and his contemporaries implemented new policies to clarify Catholic doctrine and structure spiritual practices in Milan after the Council of Trent (1545 - 1563). Carlo Bascapè (1550 - 1615), Saint Carlo's close friend and the Bishop of Novara, personally oversaw a building campaign to reorganize the chapels at Varallo and restructure the pilgrimage experience according to the ideals of the Counter-Reformation. These changes were largely based on designs by Galeazzo Alessi (1512 - 1572), which are collected and preserved in a manuscript called the Libro dei Misteri (1565 - 1569) in Varallo's Biblioteca Civica. Construction continued throughout the first half of the seventeenth-century, led primarily by Giovanni d'Enrico the Younger (c. 1559 - 1644) and his family workshop. Beginning in 1609, d'Enrico also supervised the construction of the new Basilica, which is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin. The Basilica was consecrated in 1649 and the old church, or Chiesa Vecchia, was demolished in 1773, but the Chiesa Nuova was not finished until the façade was added in 1891 - 1896.
Description
Sacro Monte, Varallo
Citation
Samuel Butler, Ex Voto: An Account of The Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia (London: Tübner & Co., 1888), 232; Gaudenzio Bordiga, Storia e guida del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Francesco Caligaris, 1830), 92; Michele Cusa, Il Sacro Monte di Varallo (Vercelli: De Gaudenzi, 1858), 105; Elena De Filippis, Guida del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Borgosesia: Tipolitografia di Borgosesia, 2009), 134 - 135; Giovanni Giacomo Ferrari. Brevi considerazioni Sopra i Misteri del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Pietro Revelli, 1611), unpaginated; Giovanni Pietro Giussano, The Life of St. Charles Borromeo, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Vol. II. Henry Edward Manning Trans., (London: Burnes and Oates, 1884), 47, 236 - 240; Tomasso Nanni. Dialogo sopra i Misteri del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Pietro Revelli, 1616), unpaginated; Una Roman D'Elia, Raphael's Ostrich (University Park: The Pennsylvania State Università Press, 2015), 168 - 171; Stefania Stefani Perrone, Guida al Sacro Monte di Varallo (Torino: Kosmos Edizioni, 1995), 81.