Chapel No. 6. Il Presepio.

This is more a grotto than a chapel, and is declared in an inscription set up by Bernardino Caimi in letters of gold to be “the exact counterpart of the one at Bethlehem in which the Virgin gave birth to her Divine Son.”  Bordiga writes of this inscription as still visible, but I have repeatedly looked for it without success.

If Caimi, as Fassola distinctly says, had the above inscription set up, it is plain that this, and perhaps the Shepherd’s chapel hard by, were among the very earliest chapels undertaken. This is rendered probable by the statement of Fassola that the shell of the Circumcision chapel which adjoins the ones we are now considering was built “dalli principij del Sacro Monte.”  He says that this fact is known by the testimony of certain contemporaneous painters (“il che s’ argumenta dalli Pittori che furono di que’ tempi”). Clearly, then, the Presepio, Shepherds, and Circumcision chapels were in existence some years before the Magi chapel was begun. Gaudenzio was too young to have done the figures before Bernardino died. Originally, doubtless, the grotto was shown without figures, which were added by Gaudenzio, later on; they were probably among his first works. The place is so dark that they cannot be well seen, but about noon the sun comes down a narrow staircase and they can be made out very well for a quarter of an hour or so; they are then seen to be very good.

They have no fresco background, nor yet is there any to the Shepherd’s chapel, which confirms me in thinking these to have been among the earliest works undertaken. Colombo says that the infant Christ in the Presepio is not by Gaudenzio, the original figure having been stolen by some foreigner not many years ago, and Battista, the excellent Custode of the Sacro Monte, assures me that this was the second time the infant had been stolen.