CHAPTER XV. THE PIETÀ AND REMAINING CHAPELS.

THE remaining chapels are few in number, and, whatever they may once have been, unimportant in character. The first is

CHAPEL NO. 40. THE PIETÀ.

The three preceding chapels are supposed to be on Mount Calvary, and from them we descend by a flight of stone steps to the level of the piazza. Immediately on reaching this we come upon the Pietà. We have seen that this chapel originally contained Gaudenzio’s Journey to Calvary, and that the fresco background still, in so far as it is not destroyed, treats this subject, while the modelled figures represent the Pietà. Of Gaudenzio’s original work Caccia says:—

“Come fu Christo de’ panni spogliato, Montando il Monte poi Calvario detto, Nel mezzo a manigoldi mal trattato, Contemplar possi con pietoso affetto,

Seguito da Maria e da l’amato Discepolo di lui, et è l’effetto Sculto si bene e doitamente fatto Che sembra vero e non del ver ritratto.”

“Per una scala asceso al Sacro Monte Si entra nel più d’ogn’ altro sacro tempio,” &c.

The words “_montando il monte poi_,” &c., must refer to a supposed ascent on the part of Christ Himself, for Gaudenzio’s work was on a level with Tabachetti’s present Journey to Calvary which Caccia has just described, and Caccia goes on to say that from Gaudenzio’s chapel (the present Pietà) one “ascends by a staircase to” the most sacred chapel of all—the Crucifixion—as one does at present. That the present Pietà and the adjacent Entombment chapels were once one chapel, may be seen by any one who examines the vaulting inside the first-named chapel. Signor Arienta pointed this out to me, and at the same time called my attention to the fact that Gaudenzio’s fresco on the wall facing the spectator does not turn the corner and join on with the subject that fills the left-hand wall. A flag and a horse are cut off, and the rest of them is not seen. I sometimes question whether the original wooden-figured entombment was in the chapel in which the present modern figures are seen, but it probably was so.

There was also a fainting Madonna mentioned in the prose part of Caccia as a work by itself and described as follows:—

“Come la Madonna è tramortita vedendo N.S. condotto à morte.”

This is not referred to in the poetical part, and must have been a mere cell occupied by a single figure. No doubt it was seen through the window that is still approached by two steps on the south side of the present Pietà, and the space it occupied has been thrown into the present work.

I do not know when Gaudenzio’s Journey to Calvary was dispersed, but it was some time, doubtless, between 1600 and 1644. It is puzzling to note that the Pietà appears in the plan of 1671 as situated rather in the part of the building now occupied by the Entombment than by the Pietà, while the 39 that should mark the site of the Entombment does not appear; but this is perhaps only an error in the plan itself. I find, however, the attempt to understand the changes that have taken place here so difficult that I shall abandon it and will return to the present aspect of the work.

Torrotti says that some of the statues in the present chapel are by Gaudenzio, which they are not. Fassola gives them all to Giovanni D’Enrico; Bordiga speaks of the work in the highest terms, but for my own