THE TEMPTATION OF THE SENSES AT THE SACRO MONTE DI VARALLO

Christine Göttler

During his sojourn in northern Italy in the summer or autumn of 1604, the painter and art critic Federico Zuccaro (1542–1609) travelled to the Sacri Monti at Varallo, Crea, and – possibly – Orta. The journey was suggested by none other than Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), archbishop of Milan and Zuccaro’s long-standing patron and friend. Borromeo had met the much older artist during his cardinalate in Rome (1586–1595) and he had also served as the first Cardinal Protector of the Accademia di San Luca, founded by Zuccaro in November of 1593 and presided over by him as principe.1 When Borromeo left for Milan in 1595, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti (1522–1597), equally as well known for his expertise in the sacred and profane arts, succeeded him in that function.2 Zuccaro’s Academy

1 On Federico Zuccaro and the Accademia di San Luca: Weddigen T. (ed.), Federico Zuccaro: Kunst zwischen Ideal und Reform, Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana 27 (Basel: 2000); Prinz W., “Gli statuti dell’Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno e dell’Accademia di S. Luca a Roma”, in Winner M. (ed.), Der Maler Federico Zuccari: Ein römischer Virtuoso von europäischem Ruhm, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 32 (1997–1998) Beiheft (Munich: 1999) 295–300; Röttgen S., “Der Maler als Principe: Realität, Hintergrund und Wirkung von Zuccaris akademischem Programm”, in Winner (ed.), Der Maler Federico Zuc- cari 301–315. On Federico Borromeo: Jones P.M., Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana: Art Patronage and Reform in Seventeenth-Century Milan (Cambridge: 1993); Boer W. de, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden: 2001); Mozzarelli C. (ed.), Federico Borromeo principe e mecenate, thematic issue of Studia Borromaica 18 (Milan: 2004); Prodi P., “Borromeo, Federico”, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (henceforth, DBI) 13 (1971) 33–42. On Borromeo’s relationship with the scien- tific culture: Ferro R., “Accademia dei Lincei e res publica litteraria: Justus Ryckius, Erycius Puteanus e Federico Borromeo”, in Battistini A. – Angelis G. De – Olmi G. (eds.), All’origine della scienza moderna: Federico Cesi e l’Accademia dei Lincei (Bologna: 2007) 203–270. I gratefully acknowledge Wietse de Boer, David Young Kim, and Sarah Joan Moran for their valuable suggestions and comments. 2 Newer literature on Paleotti’s Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane includes: Deen Schildgen B., “Cardinal Paleotti and the Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane”, in Feigenbaum G. – Ebert-Schifferer S. (eds.), Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Reli- gious Art, Issues & Debates 20 (Los Angeles: 2011) 8–16; Bianchi I., La politica delle immagini nell’età della Controriforma: Gabriele Paleotti teorico e committente (Bologna: 2008); Steine- mann H., Eine Bildtheorie zwischen Repräsentation und Wirkung: Kardinal Gabriele Paleot- tis “Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane” (1582), Studien zur Kunstgeschichte 164 (Hildesheim: 2006); Baumgarten J.M., “Wirkungsästhetik und Wechselwirkungen: Kunst 394 christine göttler emerged from a climate of religious reform that prevailed in Italy in the 1590s, and the city of Rome offered many opportunities for exchange between reform-minded laymen and -women as well as religious profes- sionals. Also founded in 1593 with the participation of Federico Zuccaro, the Congregazione dei Nobili at the Professed House of the Gesù provided another social setting where advocates of religious reform met to perform spiritual exercises or ‘spiritual recreations’ (ricreazioni spirituali), as this new kind of religious practice was called, aimed at the spiritual formation and restoration of the soul.3 As indicated by the synonymous use of ‘ric- reazioni’ and ‘esercizi’, ‘ricreazioni spirituali’ were generally understood as a set of spiritual activities, performed in solitude or small groups that would instruct and refresh the soul.4 In this essay, the Sacri Monti are considered as offering yet another stage for such ‘recreations’; particularly, we will consider how the affective and therapeutic potential of religious images was tested and explored. I shall argue that the remoteness of these sacred landscapes and natural sites in the alpine regions of Italy and Switzerland rendered them especially suit- able for the deployment of various new modes of spirituality ­– ascetic, penitential, and therapeutic – in which the faculty of the imagination as the most contested of the inner senses played a central role. While geo- graphically distant from each other the sacred landscape of Varallo (as ‘new Jerusalem’ in the Alps) and the ‘urbs sacra’ of Rome functioned as interlinked sites where new forms of spirituality were being explored by some of the same protagonists of religious reform. Engaging both mind and body, inner and outer senses, these spiritual ‘exercises’ or ‘recreations’, as they were called, were motivated by an interest in further developing the potential of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises as a means of shaping, healing, und Rhetorik in den Traktaten Carlo Borromeos, Gabriele Paleottis und Roberto Bellarmi- nos”, in Laufhütte M. (ed.), Künste und Natur in Diskursen der Frühen Neuzeit, Wolfenbüt- teler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 35, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: 2000), vol. I, 515–534; Jones P.M., “Art Theory as Ideology: Gabriele Paleotti’s Hierarchical Notion of Painting’s Uni- versality and Reception”, in Farago C. (ed.), Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650 (New Haven – London: 1995) 127–139. 3 Imorde J., “Künstlerische Theorie und religiöse Praxis im römischen Frühbarock”, in Weddigen, Federico Zuccaro 147–168, here 166–168. Members of the Congregazione dei Nobili included Cardinals Roberto Bellarmino, Federico Borromeo, Francesco Maria del Monte, Gabriele Paleotti, and the poet Torquato Tasso. 4 In his “Ragionamenti interni” (published in the Opere, Venice: Baglioni, 1616), Guido Casoni identifies ‘solitude’ with ‘recreation of the soul’: ‘O solitudine, ricreazione dell’animo; custode fida e sicura dell’uomo, ministra della contemplazione, instromento per fabbricare nell’anima un paradiso, scala per ascendere al cielo’. I cite from Battaglia S., Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 26 vols. (Turin: 1961–2008), vol. XVI, 164–165.