#varallo

Porque un 5 de febrero nacieron cinco gigantes históricos del fútbol 🌍✨ Pura casualidad… o magia del balón 👀🪄

🕰️ 1910 – 🇦🇷 Francisco Varallo 🎩 1965 – 🇷🇴 Gheorghe Hagi 💥 1984 – 🇦🇷 Carlos Tévez 🚀 1985 – 🇵🇹 Cristiano Ronaldo 🎨 1992 – 🇧🇷 Neymar da Silva

New Writer Favorite Artwork Fact File

To welcome our new IASblog writers, we thought it would be wonderful if they introduce themselves by sharing their favorite work as one of our “Favorite Artwork Fact Files (FAFF). Our second FAFF comes from Maggie Bell. 

What is your favorite artwork? The Sacro Monte di Varallo, an Observant Franciscan site founded in the late fifteenth century to recreate the experience of being a pilgrim in the Holy Land.

…and your favorite detail? I love the view in the Bethlehem complex through a carefully placed opening in a grate, through which the viewer can see one of the Magi removing his crown.

Why? I visited Varallo while I was conducting research for my Master’s thesis.  I remember the trip from Santa Barbara to the entrance gate of the Sacro Monte being a long and difficult one.  When I arrived I imagined that I felt similarly to the many other pilgrims who had come to Varallo for various reasons over the centuries.  The site itself is a bit overwhelming, and was clearly meant to be understood with one’s whole body.  The paths take visitors through trees that obscure one’s view, and passing from the outside heat (I was there in August) to the dark quiet cool inside the ”temples” requires visual and physical adjustment. 

The Sacro Monte di Varallo was founded in 1491 by the Observant Franciscan friar Bernardino Caimi. Bernardino had returned to Varallo, a small city close to Lago Maggiore, after serving in the Franciscan-controlled territories in the Holy Land. Bernardino wanted to create a more accessible option for pilgrims in the form of a Sacro Monte, or “Holy Mountain,” designed to mimic the pilgrimage experience down to the very measurements of particularly important sacred sites. For instance, the recreated Nativity Grotto at Varallo looks very similar to the actual grotto in Bethlahem, and the replicated stone covering Christ’s sepulcher was allegedly based on measurements taken by Franciscans who had seen the original. Visitors can still follow the stations of Christ’s suffering along the Via Dolorosa leading up from the town of Varallo to the top of the Sacro Monte, which match the distances demarcated on the original road in Jerusalem.

In the early to mid-sixteenth century the pilgrim’s experience was given added vivacity through the addition of wooden and terracotta polychrome sculptures representing figures from the life and Passion of Christ, almost all of which were created by Gaudenzio Ferrari (1471-1546) and his workshop.  The earliest known sculptural grouping is the Pietra dell’unzione slightly smaller than life-size and made entirely of painted wood. Later figures, like those in situ today, have a heightened level of realism and wear fabric clothes and wigs made of human hair.  (In fact, you may donate your hair to the Sacro Monte, as long as it isn’t dyed.)

By the mid-sixteenth century the Sacro Monte had fallen into disrepair, though interest in the site was revitalized thanks largely to Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan and a powerful voice during the Counter-Reformation. Borromeo was a devotee of the Sacro Monte, often spending the night praying in the Sepulcher next to a wooden figure of the dead Christ. Between 1565 and 1569, just after the Council of Trent had sanctioned the use of images for devotional purposes, the architect Galeazzo Alessi (1512-1572) designed elaborate new “temple” structures for the sacred sites, as well as glass enclosures, or vetriate, for the sculptural groups.  This fundamentally altered the interactions between pilgrims and images, as they could no longer move among or touch the figures but rather needed to view them through glass from a distance. Visitors today are still separated from these figures, and their engagement is further controlled by openings in the barriers, which frame specific views of the scenes within.

The Sacro Monte di Varallo has been an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003, along with eight other Sacri Monti in the region. Each of these sites tells a specific story.  For instance, the Sacro Monte di Orta leads the visitor through the life of St. Francis, and the Sacro Monte di Varese represents the life of the Virgin.  The Sacro Monte di Varallo remains an important part of the surrounding community, and early-modern pilgrims have been replaced by locals and visitors strolling the grounds, and buses of school children on field trips.

References: Jonathan Bober, “Varallo, Sacro Monte” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press.

“Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.” 

Mario Labò “Galeazzo Alessi”, Treccani Dizionario Biografico.

View of Sacro Monte di Varallo site.

View through enclosures, Sacro Monte di Varallo.

Pietra dell’unzione, artist unknown, 1493-1507, Sacro Monte di Varallo.