Flight into Egypt
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Authors
Unknown follower of Gaudenzio Ferrari
Date
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Keyword
Flight into Egypt , Egypt , Jesus , St. Joseph , Virgin Mary , Massacre
Alternative Title
Abstract
This chapel was constructed between 1576 and 1580, based on a design by Galeazzo Alessi that is recorded in the Libro dei Misteri (1565 - 1569). According to Stefani Perrone, this building was intended to house The Massacre of the Innocents, while another chapel was built nearby for this scene. The first Flight into Egypt Chapel was finished in 1583 and demolished three years later. The reason for its destruction remains unclear. It was then that these stucco sculptures were moved from their original site to the current location. Bordiga suggests that the figures "look like they could belong to [Fermo] Stella," but he does not seem overly confident in this attribution. Most other experts state that the artist was an unknown follower of Gaudenzio Ferrari. The early guidebooks record that the frescoes were painted around 1580 by Giovanni Battista della Rovere (il Fiamminghino), but most nineteenth-century authors, including Cattaneo and Bordiga, give them to Gerolamo Chignoli in 1640. It is also possible that both artists had contributed their own series of paintings, since the frescoes inside the Sacri Monti's chapels are often damaged by humidity in considerably less than sixty years. In 1884, the chapel's roof was rebuilt, and the frescoes were repainted by Francesco Burlazzi (1846 - 1908) in 1886. He was an instructor at the local art academy in Varallo, the Scuola Barolo, and his work in Chapel Ten was funded by a local notary by the name of Zoppeti. In his design, Alessi had placed the sculptures at the center of the chapel, protected by a large vitrine made of wood and glass. Visitors would enter the chapel from one side and walk alongside the figures before they exited through a door on the other side of the building. This design is emblematic of fabbricieri's goals for the Counter-Reformation renovation at Varallo, which was largely concerned with adding structure to the religious experience, often by imposing physical barriers between the pilgrims and sculptures, while still allowing visitors to engage with the scenes directly and individually. In the finished chapel, the figures are grouped at the back of the chapel, so pilgrims cannot walk around them as Alessi had planned. This solution puts a greater emphasis on spiritual discipline and would have been significantly less expensive than Alessi's proposal. The Holy Family also travels across the chapel from right to left in the final composition, a reversal both of the trajectory in Alessi's design and the pilgrim's movement along the devotional path. It is exceptionally rare for the Sacri Monti's visitors to travel in the opposite direction of the figures inside the chapels. This pattern likely indicates that the original chapel was oriented in such a way that both the sculptures and their viewers seemed to walk in the same direction. / 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), 143; Gaudenzio Bordiga, Storia e guida del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Francesco Caligaris, 1830), 46; Girolamo Cattaneo, Guida per ben vistare la nuova Gerusalemme nel Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Francesco Calligaris, 1826), 25 - 26; Elena De Filippis, Guida del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Borgosesia: Tipolitografia di Borgosesia, 2009), 58 - 59; Giovanni Giacomo Ferrari. Brevi considerazioni Sopra i Misteri del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Pietro Revelli, 1611), unpaginated; Tomasso Nanni. Dialogo sopra i Misteri del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Pietro Revelli, 1616), unpaginated; Stefania Stefani Perrone, Guida al Sacro Monte di Varallo (Torino: Kosmos Edizioni, 1995), 43.