![]() The palpable sculpture of Mount Tabor that presents Christ's miraculous Transfiguration solicits solitude in order to remake pilgrimage. Renovating familiar exegetical literature on biblical mountains and ascetic retreat, the narrative of Christ’s Transfiguration offers the promise of true spiritual knowledge at its sculptural summit. ![]() This paper complicates current understandings of solitude at this remote alpine pilgrimage site by turning away from Varallo's palaces and squares to the enormous sculptural representation of Mount Tabor in the Transfiguration chapel (c. In the final decades of the sixteenth century the bishop of Novara Carlo Bascapè worked tirelessly to reconceive the Sacro Monte of Varallo as a new kind of 'luogo sacro' that the Italian art historian Pier Giorgio Longo has described in terms of “a search for solitude and reflexive and interior communication with the soul of the beholding pilgrim.” In making this claim, Longo argues that the architectural restructuring of the Passion chapels were the primary means of soliciting the individual reflection of the beholder. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2023
Categories |