| Tanzio da Varallo stands out from other artists of this period by the use of distinctive realism and visual tension he. Contemporary accounts describe him as temperamental, tense, and violent. A document of 1600 notes that he was a painter and was given permission together with his brother Melchiorre to leave their native region to travel to Rome for the Jubilee of Pope Clement VIII. Arriving there just as Caravaggio* was having an impact, Tanzio responded to the latter's influence. Yet his assimilation is so personal that the exact relationship to Caravaggio's paintings is difficult to pinpoint. Tanzio*s earliest documented activity comes from 1616, when he is already mature. Our knowledge of his early development is sketchy. Two pictures, a Circumcision (parish church of Fara San Martino, Abruzzi) and The Virgin and Saints (Collegiata at Pescocostanzo, Abruzzi) are dated before 1616 and have a deliberately archaic power. They evidently suited the tastes of their provincial patrons. To those years should be added the altarpiece of San Carlo Borromeo Distributing the Host to the Plague Victims (parish church at Domodossola), which was also painted before 1616. These three already have the crisp, almost metallic clarity that would become increasingly evident in Tanzio's later work. From 1616 on, documents trace Tanzio's lifelong involvement with fresco decorations for that peculiarly Lombard phenomenon: the sacro monte chapels featuring frescoes, sculptures, and architecture. Collaborating with his brother, the sculptor Giovanni d'Enrico, Tanzio worked at Varallo Sacro Monte on projects including his famous Christ before Pilate fresco (dated 1616/18) and the Washing of Hands (dated 1618/20). We also know that in 1627/9 he was engaged on frescoes for the Capella dell'Angelo Custode in San Gaudenzio, Novarra, and that in 1634 he was painting Scenes from the Life of St. Francis in the parish church of Borgosesia. Besides fresco decorations, Tanzio continued to produce altarpieces. These have a mesmerizing power by virtue of their obsessive realism, which can qualify as the seventeenth century's version of modern-day hyperrealism. Two of his most remarkable examples are the Madonna and Child with Saint Dominic and Francis (ca. 1628, parish church, Lumellogno) and the huge Battle of Sennacherib (dated 1629, Novara, Basilica of San Gaudenzio). The Lumellogno picture is a masterpiece of controlled monumentality, idealized beauty, and almost crazed piety; the Novara battle picture is one of the most eccentric paintings of the entire seventeenth century. Its strangely aligned muscular figures on the lower half of the picture create rippling patterns of dark and light across the meticulously painted surface; this forms a claustrophobic counterpart to the parting heavens above, from which steps the Angel of God to wreak vengeance on the Assyrians gathered below. The resulting effect is an almost hysterical sense of fear and panic. Despite his sense of realism and fine detail, Tanzio always maintained a generalized, often idealized overall conception of form, which is particularly notable in his portrayal of youthful male saints (such as John the Baptist) and his madonnas. His compact, springy, sculptural sense of form no doubt had connections to local Lombard traditions from which he managed to distill a particularly sustaining vision. |
