EX VOTO.* THIS singular book, with its vivid descriptions, its

strange and fascinating illustrations, its startling ideas—amounting often to discoveries and new departures in the world of religious art—its criticism, full of knowledge and originality, if also of a certain mocking spirit which destroys the effect of it for some minds,—this book, with all its peculiarities, is certainly a striking contribution to literature of the kind, and will be an authority on the past and present history of such places as Varallo. No one can have visited any of these curious pilgrimage mountains—Varese, Orta, the small but attractive Sasso at Locarnd, or the wonderful Varallo, the mother of them all—without wishing to know more of their history, their origin, the life and work and fame, sometimes only local, of the artists who were employed upon them.

Mr. Butler's devotion to the Sacro Monte of Varallo is of long standing. He did not include an account of it in his former book, Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont, &c., because he felt that it ought to have a book to itself. His admiration for Gaudenzio Ferrari, and the other artists who worked there, is beyond all bounds. With all this, we need hardly say that his devotion to Varallo is of a totally (esthetic character, un- mixed with reverence. In fact, he speaks with a certain scorn of those persons in the ages of faith who thought differently, —St. Carlo Borromeo, for instance. To the modern mind, expressed by Mr. Butler, he is nothing but a superstitious fool. Visiting Varallo, he spent a day and night in fasting and • Rs Voto an Account of the Barra Monte, or New Jerusalem, at Varallo-Sesia t with Some Notice of Tabachetti's remaining Work at the Sanctuary of Crea. By Samuel Butler. London : Trtlbner and Co. 1E88. prayer in the chapels, and then, says his Life, " continued his journey to Milan, renewed in fervour of spirit, and with a firm determination to begin again to serve God with greater

energy than ever." "Surely," says Mr. Butler, "one may add according to his lights,' after the words to serve God." May it not be suggested that we all, even the cleverest of us, work " according to our lights ;" and that, but for St. Carlo, and men of faith like his, there would be little mediaeval art in the world for our modern critics to enjoy or abuse, or lay down the law upon ? Mr. Butler himself says in his first chapter, very well and very truly, that " neither power over line, nor knowledge of form, nor fine sense of colour, nor facility of invention, nor any of the marvellous gifts will make any man's work live permanently in our affections unless it is rooted in sincerity of faith and in love towards God and man." Why, then, all through his book, does he so often sneer at the " sincerity of faith " which in old days found its expression in such works as the Sacro Monte at Varallo P The explana- tion, if we do not know it already, is to be found in his last chapter, in such words as these :-

"Of the letter in which the Sacro Monte is written, I have at times in the preceding pages spoken lightly enough. Who in these days but the advocates whose paid profession it is to maintain the existing order, and those whom custom and vested interests hold enthralled, accepts the letter of Christianity more than he accepts the letter of Oriental exaggerated phraseology ?"

If Mr. Butler imagines that this assertion is literally true, and that all " we Protestants " agree with him, it is no wonder that he finds the grotesque quaintnesses of the Sacro Monte so amusing, and makes such excellent jokes of its old miracu- lous stories. That this is very far from the most enlightened and understanding spirit in which to approach such works as these, we have no doubt at all. But we cannot fail to be grateful to Mr. Butler for all the curious information he gives us as to the history of the Sacro Monte, and as to the artists employed there.

This New Jerusalem was founded at the end of the fifteenth century by Bernardino Omni. The two old chroniclers of Varallo, Torrotti and Fassola, agree in the main points of the story : how Caimi came from the Holy Land, " full of zeal and -devotion," " and ere long conceived the design of reproducing in Italy a copy of the most important sites in the Holy

Land :"—

" Old and mendicant as he was, he was nothing daunted by the magnitude of the task before him, and searched Lom- bardy from one end to the other in his desire to provide Pro- vidence with a suitable abode. For a long while he sought in vain, and could find no place that was really like Jerusalem, but at last, towards the end of 1491, he came to Varallo alone, and had hardly got there before he felt himself rapt into an ecstasy, in the which he was drawn towards the Sacro Monte ; when he got up to the plain on the top of the mountain which was then called `La Pareto,' perceiving at once its marvellous resemblance to Jerusalem, even to the existence of another mountain hard by which was like Calvary, he threw himself on the ground and -thanked God in a transport of delight. It is said that for some time previously the shepherds who watched their flocks on this solitary height had been talking of nothing but of heavenly harmonies that had been heard coming from the sky ; that Caimi himself while yet in the Holy Land had been shown this place in a vision ; and that on reaching an eminence called Sceletta, he had been conducted to the site itself by the song of a bird which sang with such extraordinary sweetness that he had been constrained to follow it."

Mr. Butler afterwards expresses his opinion that there is not much more resemblance between Varallo and Jerusalem than between Monmouth and Macedon, and he is inclined to attribute this spiritual fortress, and others like it, to the feeling in the Church of Rome that it was necessary to use strong measures, in order to keep these Italian valleys of the Alps in her fold at all, the reformed doctrines having found their way there, apparently, before the days of Caimi.

The figures in the earlier chapels were mostly of wood, terra-cotta not becoming general till the beginning of Gaudenzio Ferrari's time, early in the sixteenth century. He, sculptor and painter in one, was able to add to the effect of lily groups of figures by fresco backgrounds, figures and back- ground thus belonging entirely to each other, and producing wonderful and lifelike scenes. Of Ferrari's work in this way, the Crucifixion Chapel at Varallo is the most remarkable specimen. Mr. Butler says of it :-

"When we bear in mind that the Crucifixion Chapel was the first work of its kind, that it consists of four large walls and a riding covered with magnificent frescoes, comprising about 150 figures ; that it contains twenty-six life-sized statues, two of them on horseback, and much detail by way of accessory, all done with

the utmost care, and all coloured up to nature,—when we bear this in mind and realise what it all means, it is not easy to refrain from saying, as I have earlier done, that the Crucifixion Chapel is the most daringly ambitious work of art that any one man was ever yet known to undertake ; and if we could see it as Gaudenzio left it, we should probably own that in the skill with which the conception was carried out, no less than in its initial daring, it should rank as perhaps the most remarkable work of art that even Italy has produced."

This praise sounds prodigious; and it is almost comforting to find on another page that Gaudenzio's sculpture was inferior to his painting. As a painter,—we must quote Mr. Butler's own words, by way of warning and instruction :— " Gandenzio Ferrari was what Raphael is commonly believed

to have been Gaudenzio Ferrari's feeling was profound, whereas Raphael's was at best only skin-deep."

In these comparisons, Raphael comes off, on the whole, very

badly :-

" As for the reputations of the great dead, they are governed in the main by the chicane that obtains among the living ; it is only after generations of flourishing imposture, that even approximate right gets done. Look at Raphael, see how he still reigns supreme over those who have the people's ears and purses at command. True, Guido, Guercino, and Domenichino have at last tumbled into the abyss, and we know very well that

Raphael will ere long fall too Look again at that grossest of impostors, Bacon. Look at by far the greater number of the standard classical authors, painters, and musicians."

All this suggests reflections. It suggests what we have read somewhere, that " beauty exists in many forms;" it reminds us

that " the ages are all equal," and that the genius of each age manifests itself differently ; it makes us ask whether Mr. Butler's taste is not of the narrowest, and less likely to be justified in the end than that of the generations who have been foolish enough to admire Raphael or Bacon.

After Gaudenzio Ferrari, the most distinguished of the artists employed on the Sacro Monte were Tabachetti and Giovanni d'Enrico. Tabachetti, called by Mr. Butler "the Titan of terra-cotta," is hardly known at all outside the Val Sesia. His work is really wonderful; in this book one can best judge of it by the photograph of the sleeping St. Joseph ; but some of his greatest work is to be found in the Chapel of the Journey to Calvary. Tabachetti's real name was Tabaquet ; he was a Fleming, from Dinant ; but very little is known of his history. Giovanni d'Enrico was one of three brothers, all artists, born towards the end of the sixteenth century. They all worked upon the Sacro Monte. To judge by the photographs, Giovanni's figures are among the most lifelike and the most remarkable to be found there. His Caiaphas is astonishing ; so

is his Herod; and two laughing boys in the Herod Chapel

seem to be the very height of realism. Mr. Butler thinks that a figure which he calls the " Vecchietto," supposed to be by Tabachetti, is the supreme effort of all. This figure of a little old man looking up to heaven, with his hand raised to his hat, is the frontispiece of the book. It now stands in the Chapel of the Descent from the Cross ; but Mr. Butler thinks that it must have been removed from some other chapel.

His opinion of this figure is so high, that he classes it with the Venus of Milo, and " the finest work of Rembrandt, Giorgione, and Velasquez."

Perhaps the oddest and most original thing in a book full of originalties and oddities is the photograph in which Mr. Butler and Stefano Scotto. Gaudenzio Ferrari's old master, stand side by side. Mr. Butler has succeeded admirably in his object of showing how these terra-cotta statues compare with life, for at the first glance it is possible to believe Scotto to be some curiously dressed old cicerone, explaining a chapel, perhaps, as he leads the way into it. To intelligent visitors to Varallo this book will probably in future be indispensable ; as regards the chapels, their artists, and their aesthetic history, it is a most complete guide. We can only hope that those who study it will have wit and wisdom to gather the wheat for their own needs, and to cast the tares away.