Chapter 10

THE SEVEN CHAPELS NUMBERED 5-11.

CHAPEL No. 5. VISIT OF THE MAGI.

Fassola says that this chapel was begun about the year 1500, and completed about 1520, at the expense of certain wealthy Milanese; Torrotti repeats this. Bordiga gives it a later date, making Gaudenzio begin to work in it in 1531; he supposes that Gaudenzio left Varallo suddenly in that year to undertake work for the church of St. Cristoforo at Vercelli without quite completing the Magi frescoes; and it is indeed true that the frescoes appear to be unfinished, some parts at first sight seeming only sketched in outline, as though the work had been interrupted; but Colombo, whose industry is only equalled by his fine instinct and good sense, refers both the frescoes and their interruption to a later date. Still, Fassola may have only intended, and indeed probably did intend, that the shell of the building was completed by 1520, the figures and frescoes being deferred for want of funds, though the building was ready for occupation.

Colombo, on page 115 of his "Life and Work of Gaudenzio Ferrari," says that Bordiga remarked the obvious difference in style between the frescoes in the Magi and the Crucifixion chapels, which he held to have been completed in 1524, but nevertheless thought seven years the utmost that passed between the two works. Colombo shows that by 1528 Gaudenzio was already established at Vercelli, and ascribes the frescoes in the Magi chapel to a date some time between 1536 and 1539, during which time he believes that Gaudenzio returned to Varallo, finding no trace of him elsewhere. The internal evidence in support of this opinion is strong, for the Crucifixion chapel is not a greater advance upon the frescoes in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, painted in 1513, magnificent as these last are, than the Magi frescoes are upon the Crucifixion, and an interval of ten years or so is not too much to allow between the two. Gaudenzio Ferrari was like Giovanni Bellini, a slow but steady grower from first to last; with no two painters can we be more sure that as long as they lived they were taking pains, and going on from good to better; nevertheless, it takes many years before so wide a difference can be brought about, as that between the frescoes in the Magi and Crucifixion chapels. The Magi frescoes have, however, unfortunately suffered from damp much more than the Crucifixion ones, and I should say they had been a good deal retouched, but by a very capable artist.

Colombo thinks that in these frescoes Gaudenzio was assisted by his son Gerolamo, who died in 1539, and, as I have said, holds that it was the death of this son which made him leave Varallo, without even finishing the frescoes on which he was engaged.

But Signor Arienta assures me that the frescoes were not in reality left incomplete: he holds that the wall on the parts where the outline shows was too dry when the colour was laid on, and that