Jenkins_Object_Annotation_6

Context: This is a scene from the Calvary Chapel at the Santo Monte of Varallo. The Santo Monte was made by Friar Bernadino Caimi at the end of the 15th century, but this specific scene was not completed until 1521. The Santo Monte was first built by Caimi as an imitation of the pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem. The Chapel of the Way to Calvary was intended to “conform with and resemble all other statues in the [chapel]”(Gottler p. 405). The Santo Monte functioned as a multi-sensory theatre of devotion, where pilgrims could see, touch, and move through the narratives, blurring boundaries between art and reality to create an embodied virtual reality.

The subject of this scene is the Passion of Christ, specifically the Crucifixion. It depicts Christ on the cross, bracketed by two other crucifixions, with Roman soldiers appearing to walk around under the scene, with an audience to the right. Painted on the walls behind it are angels amongst clouds.

The organization of the composition is one of the most unique aspects of the Santo Monte as a whole. It’s one of the few pilgrimage sites that utilizes a combination of sculpture, frescoes, scents, and haptics. The statues are meant to seem as realistic as possible, with painted frescoes on the walls behind them adding to the viewer’s immersion into the scene. This combination creates a trompe-l’oeil effect where the statues make the fresco seem more realistic by drawing you into the scene, and the fresco makes the statues appear more realistic, casting the illusion that they’re moving from the wall into your space. Additionally, the use of scents such as incense, smoke, oils, or cyprus, works to further the scene as a virtual reality that invokes strong emotion. However, bars were eventually added to the exterior of each scene, preventing the viewers from walking into the scene. This was due to the fear that the intense realism created the possibility that pilgrims would become too emotionally involved and begin seeing the statues as idols, instead of icons (Gottler p. 431).

Ousterhaut suggests that the pilgrimage sites that replicate Jerusalem utilize specific imitations of the original city, such as measurements and topography, to create a similar virtual reality to what they would experience in Jerusalem itself. This allows the pilgrims to imitate the experience of the apostles, intensifying their virtual reality (Ousterhaut p. 401).

Elsner also asserts that the replicas of the Holy Land in Europe functioned as devotional surrogates for the actual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The relics and their replicas allow the divine to be visible and material for Christians by evoking the sacred myth of their origins and supporting a sacred center that contains materials from a more sacred, authenticated center; the collections of synecdochic fragments, marking an ancestral and genealogical link between sacred past and present (Elsner p. 118).

Questions:

1. Why would the Santo Monte in particular create the fear of temptation? How do the statues or frescoes evoke stronger feelings of empathy and devotion in the pilgrims?
2. Does Shuesterman’s theory of intentionality on the part of the viewer suggest that the pilgrim would need to already believe in or understand the scenes depicted in front of them in order to evoke a sense of empathy?
3. Considering a Staar approach, would the memory of reading or hearing about the scenes of the Santo Monte be necessary for them to embody the virtual reality?