Passing
Through A Third Arch, We Come To The Mysteries Of Glory - The
Resurrection, The Ascension, The Descent Of The Holy Ghost, And The
Assumption Of The Virgin Mary.
The Dispute in the Temple is the
chapel which left the deepest impression upon us.
Here the various
attitudes and expressions of the doctors are admirably rendered.
There is one man, I think he must have been a broad churchman and
have taken in the "Spectator"; his arms are folded, and he is
smiling a little, with his head on one side. He is not prepared,
he seems to say, to deny that there is a certain element of truth
in what this young person has been saying, but it is very shallow,
and in all essential points has been refuted over and over again;
he has seen these things come and go so often, &c. But all the
doctors are good. The Christ is weak, and so are the Joseph and
Mary in the background; in fact, throughout the whole series of
chapels the wicked or worldly and indifferent people are well done,
while the saints are a feeble folk: the sculptor evidently neither
understood them nor liked them, and could never get beyond
silliness; but the artist who has lately done them up has made them
still weaker and sillier by giving them all pink noses.
Shortly after the sixth chapel has been passed the road turns a
corner, and the town on the hill (see preceding page) comes into
full view. This is a singularly beautiful spot. The chapels are
worth coming a long way to see, but this view of the town is better
still: we generally like any building that is on the top of a
hill; it is an instinct in our nature to do so; it is a remnant of
the same instinct which makes sheep like to camp at the top of a
hill; it gives a remote sense of security and vantage-ground
against an enemy. The Italians seem hardly able to look at a high
place without longing to put something on the top of it, and they
have seldom done so with better effect than in the case of the
Sacro Monte at Varese. From the moment of its bursting upon one on
turning the corner near the seventh, or Flagellation chapel, one
cannot keep one's eyes off it, and one fancies, as with S. Michele,
that it comes better and better with every step one takes; near the
top it composes, as on p. 254, but without colour nothing can give
an adequate notion of its extreme beauty. Once at the top the
interest centres in the higgledy-pigglediness of the houses, the
gay colours of the booths where strings of beads and other
religious knick-knacks are sold, the glorious panorama, and in the
inn where one can dine very well, and I should imagine find good
sleeping accommodation. The view from the balcony outside the
dining-room is wonderful, and above is a sketch from the terrace
just in front of the church.
There is here no single building comparable to the sanctuary of
Sammichele, nor is there any trace of that beautiful Lombard work
which makes so much impression upon one in the church on the Monte
Pirchiriano; the architecture is late, and barocco, not to say
rococo, reigns everywhere; nevertheless the effect of the church is
good. The visitor should get the sacristan to show him a very fine
pagliotto or altar cloth of raised embroidery, worked in the
thirteenth century. He will also do well to walk some little
distance behind the town on the way to S. Maria dei fiori (St. Mary
of the flowers) and look down upon the town and Lombardy. I do not
think he need go much higher than this, unless he has a fancy for
climbing.
The Sacro Monte is a kind of ecclesiastical Rosherville Gardens,
eminently the place to spend a happy day. We happened by good luck
to be there during one of the great feste of the year, and saw I am
afraid to say how many thousands of pilgrims go up and down. They
were admirably behaved, and not one of them tipsy. There was an
old English gentleman at the Hotel Riposo who told us that there
had been another such festa not many weeks previously, and that he
had seen one drunken man there - an Englishman - who kept abusing all
he saw and crying out, "Manchester's the place for me."
The processions were best at the last part of the ascent; there
were pilgrims, all decked out with coloured feathers, and priests
and banners and music and crimson and gold and white and glittering
brass against the cloudless blue sky. The old priest sat at his
open window to receive the offerings of the devout as they passed;
but he did not seem to get more than a few bambini modelled in wax.
Perhaps he was used to it. And the band played the barocco music
on the barocco little piazza and we were all barocco together. It
was as though the clergyman at Ladywell had given out that, instead
of having service usual, the congregation would go in procession to
the Crystal Palace with all their traps, and that the band had been
practising "Wait till the clouds roll by" for some time, and on
Sunday as a great treat they should have it.
The Pope has issued an order saying he will not have masses written
like operas. It is no use. The Pope can do much, but he will not
be able to get contrapuntal music into Varese. He will not be able
to get anything more solemn than "La Fille de Madame Angot" into
Varese. As for fugues -! I would as soon take an English bishop
to the Surrey pantomime as to the Sacro Monte on a festa.
Then the pilgrims went into the shadow of a great rock behind the
sanctuary, spread themselves out over the grass and dined.
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