Adam and Eve (or the Fall of Man)
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Authors
Jean de Wespin (il Tabachetti), Michele Prestinari, Giovanni d'Enrico, and Giuseppe Antonini
Date
Type
Image
Language
Keyword
Creation , Garden , Eden , Devil , Satan , Temptation
Alternative Title
Abstract
This chapel was part of the Post-Tridentine efforts to reorganize the Sacro Monte of Varallo. It was designed by Galeazzo Alessi (1512 - 1572) and the building was finished in 1566. Giacomo d'Adda was the patron of this chapel and the primary contributor to Alessi's project as a whole. D'Adda was a patrician from Milan who had married into the Scarognini family of Varallo, the site's leading patrons since its foundation. The addition of this chapel during the Counter-Reformation building campaign at Varallo signaled a shift in the site's theme and purpose; from a series of chapels that recreated the passion narrative according to the relative locations where each event took place in Jerusalem, to a linear progression that retold the story of salvation from original sin to the last judgement. This chapel caused a great deal of moral anxiety among the Sacro Monte's spiritual leadership. Alessi's original plan had called for four windows, including one on the back wall. If the chapel was built with these windows, which seems likely, they must have been walled in shortly after the structure was finished because of the opportunities they presented to potential voyeurs. The terracotta sculptures of Adam and Eve inside the chapel were replaced twice between 1570 and 1600. Nothing is known about the original figures (c. 1566 - 1569), except that they were installed inside the finished chapel sometime before the end of 1570 and replaced three years later. Michele Prestinari installed a new pair in 1595 on the Bishop's orders, but these too were deemed inappropriate and replaced by 1599. Prestinari's figures were disguised as Roman soldiers and moved to the scene of The Capture of Christ (now housed in Chapel Twenty-Three). Samuel Butler described in his book Ex-Voto (1888) how he had entered that chapel and felt under the figures' gesso-dipped garments to determine which was Adam and which was Eve. The pair that survives in Chapel One was modeled by Jean de Wespin (il Tabacchetti) between 1595 and 1599. Bishop Carlo Bascapè continued to criticize the group and suggest various improvements during his pastoral visits to Varallo in 1603 and 1604. He instructed the fabbricieri to add more foliage to cover Eve's body and install a new sculpture of God the Father, which was finished by 1613. Giovanni Antonio D'Adda, Giacomo's son, had also written a letter to the Fabbrica in the late fifteen-eighties expressing his concerns about moral issues and inaccuracies in the scene. He admitted that the crowd of exotic animals reflected the variety of wildlife in Eden, but worried that it would distract visitors from their devotions. His letter also reveals that the serpent at the center of the scene was originally portrayed with the head and torso of a woman, which was not part of the scriptural account. Most of the animals in Chapel One seem to survive from Prestinari's original group. The image of this scene in Giovanni Giacomo Ferrari's guidebook to Varallo (1611) closely resembles the existing composition. This was the first of Varallo's guidebooks to be written in prose and the first that included illustrations. The woodblock prints in Ferrari's guide are attributed to Joachim Dietrich Coriolanus (1590 - 1628) based on the signature "ITCF" [Ioachinus Theororicus Coriolanus Fecit], which appears in many of the images. They were reprinted in dozens of books until Michele Cusa designed new images for his 1857 publication. They continued to be published alongside new texts in many subsequent guidebooks until the mid-nineteenth century. Giovanni d'Enrico added some new animals to the group in Chapel One around 1594. Others were installed in 1884 by Giuseppe Antonini (1833 - 1889) and his students from the Scuola Barolo, a local art academy. The types of animals in the scene do not communicate any symbolic meaning. The frescoes were started by Gerolamo and Vincenzo De Mangone in 1583 and completed by Domenico Alfano in 1594. The interior frescoes were repainted in 1884 by Francesco Burlazzi (1846 - 1908), who taught at the Scuola Barolo alongside Antonini. The exterior frescoes (c. 1594) are attributed to Giovanni Battista della Rovere, who was called Il Fiamminghino. Elena de Filippis suggests that della Rovere also painted some of the interior frescoes. All of the interior and exterior stucco work (c. 1583) is also attributed to the De Mangone brothers. / 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. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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), 118 - 125; Gaudenzio Bordiga, Storia e guida del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Francesco Caligaris, 1830), 39 - 40; Girolamo Cattaneo, Guida per ben vistare la nuova Gerusalemme nel Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Francesco Calligaris, 1826), 11 - 12; Michele Cusa, Il Sacro Monte di Varallo (Vercelli: De Gaudenzi, 1858), 17- 18; Elena De Filippis, "Dal vescovo Carlo Bascapè al cardinale Ferdinando Taverna," Sacri Monti: Rivista di arte, conservazione, paessaggio e spiritualità dei Sacri Monti piemontesi e Lombardi, Vol 1, 431 - 70 (Vercelli: Tipolitografia di Borgosesia s.a.s., 2007), 438 - 439; Elena De Filippis, Guida del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Borgosesia: Tipolitografia di Borgosesia, 2009), 36 - 37; Giovanni Giacomo Ferrari. Brevi considerazioni Sopra i Misteri del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Pietro Revelli, 1611), unpaginated; Gianpaolo Garavaglia, Bibliografia del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Borgosesia: Tipolitografia di Borgosesia s.a.s., 2017), 67 - 69; Tomasso Nanni. Dialogo sopra i Misteri del Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo: Pietro Revelli, 1616), unpaginated; Pier Giorgio Longo, "Il Sacro Monte di Varallo nella seconda metà del XVI secolo" In Da Carlo Borromeo a Carlo Bascapè: La pastorale di Carlo Borromeo e il Sacro Monte di Arona, 83 - 182 (Novara: Associazione di storia della chiesa novarese, 1985), 119 - 120 and 179 - 182; Una Roman D'Elia, Raphael's Ostrich (University Park: The Pennsylvania State Università Press, 2015), 168 - 178; Stefania Stefani Perrone, Guida al Sacro Monte di Varallo (Torino: Kosmos Edizioni, 1995), 34 - 36; Geoffrey Symcox, Jerusalem in the Alps: The Sacro Monte of Varallo and the Sanctuaries of North-Western Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 49 - 52 & 109 - 111.