Dolls nowadays are typically found in one of two places: the arms of young children and the climaxes of horror films. They are correspondingly either infantile or horrific, and we have trouble interpreting them otherwise, no matter the context. In both of these settings, the operative concept is something inanimate that, in being formed after the model of a human being, somehow gains or is imputed animacy. For the child the animacy is a source of delight. In the horror film, the animacy is the opposite, embodying uncontrollable and sub-human life.
But perhaps this was not always the case. In the Italian Alps in the 16th century, a man named Guadenzio Ferrari created what I take to be hundreds of human-sized dolls, formed from terra cotta and bedecked with real human hair. They can of course be called statues, but I see them as dolls because they are arranged in relation to one another as a child arranges dolls - they are acting out scenes, not merely displaying the form of the human body. Specifically, they act out scenes from the life of Christ as told in scripture. These figures and the chapels that hold them are called the Sacri Monti de Varallo. In the three centuries after Ferrari, there have been many imitations of these original Sacri Monti made across Italy and the rest of Western Europe.
This sort of immersive experience of another world would have been one-of-a-kind at the time of their creation, 500 years before the advent of the digital technology and ‘virtual reality’. The intention behind the chapels was to allow those who could not travel to the Holy Land to simulate it in their home country of Italy. The more fundamental intention, however, was to facilitate devotion; the dolls were used as devotional objects, not merely inviting but demanding those who entered the chapels to experience something of what it was like to be in proximity to Christ. Devotion is itself the enactment of a desire to be close to see God, as we have discussed so often in class, and images are often used as devotional objects because of the way they simulate this proximity and this visibility. These immersive doll-scapes take that use to the next level, placing the body of the devotee in relation to what appear to be other bodies, acting out the stories of scripture.
Looking through the gallery of the Sacri Monti, I linger over each image, wondering whether I can figure out a way to visit this mountaintop town in Italy and see them myself—crawl into the stable next to Mary and Joseph, crouch beneath the balcony as Pontius pilate shows us the mocked Christ. On one hand these dolls are straightforwardly creepy. But I also feel strangely compelled by them - I want to go and see them, to stand among them. This instinct to be there, to get as close as possible to being there — I think is the instinct of worship, and simultaneously the instinct of doubt. It is the desire to be a part of the story and at the same time a shadow of the sentiment of Thomas: “Except I shall…put my hand into his sides I shall not believe…” (John 20:25). I’ve seen thousands of images of biblical scenes, many of them arresting and moving. But this would be something more. Words give us stories, images place us within them, films usher us through them, but this art form, this immersive sculpture takes us further yet, giving limb, if not life, to the figures about whom we have been told. Giving them three dimensional facial expressions, insisting upon the fact that stories come from bodies, allowing us to walk among the bodies with our own bodies. It is something between a zoo, a theater, and a church.
Seeking to see God, what happens to the devotee who enters a Sacri Monti chapel? Did the 16th century pilgrim have an experience inaccessible to a modern one? Would I be able to get past the delight/horror dichotomy and enter into devotion in these chapels? I do not know, as I have traveled neither to Varallo nor to the 16th century. But I will nonetheless hazard that perhaps some combination of horror and delight is precisely what the dolls are meant to evoke—that horror and delight are not at all inimical to devotion but instead necessary ingredients in the search for the face of God. Some of the chapels are truly scenes of horror - perhaps especially that portraying the slaughter of the innocents, in which terra cotta babies are disemboweled and crushed in the hands of soldiers with disfigured faces while their mothers scream in desperation.To be brought to devotion at such a scene is to be brought to the depths of horror.
Likewise, the portrayals of the trial and death of Christ leave little gore to the imagination, placing us next to a bloodied body and a haggard face that asks why it is that we flinch at wounds we ourselves inflicted. Asking us why it is that we are loathe to see ourselves in the faces of the guards, reminding us that we more often sit with the recalcitrant Peter warming our hands than walk bloodied alongside Christ.
Flipping digitally through images of the chapels, I eventually got to the the crucifixion. The experience was suddenly different—for a moment it was like finding a reproduction of one’s own kitchen in an Ikea showroom. The scene was so deeply familiar that I felt sort of numb to its strangeness, even in this brash three-dimensional form. There on the center cross hangs the same Jesus. Below sways a pale Mary and a crowd of soldiers. The spare imagery of the gospels is filled in with the prophesies of the Old Testament. It’s familiar, this scene which is reproduced not just at every altar but on pendants hanging on the necks of millions. Studying the scene, what struck me anew was the bodies of the terra-cotta thieves to the right and left of Jesus. Rather than hanging in an orderly fashion they are contorting themselves, seemingly trying to struggle free of their ropes or lessen the pain of their vertical suffocation. Where the scene had been obscured beneath its own symbolism, the three dimensional form’s demand that the realities of the body be shown brought a new pain home to the place in my mind that had grown numb to contemplation of the pain of Christ. The horror carried by these otherworldly dolls infected me as a verbal description or painting could not. These clay-formed bearers of the imago Dei to the right and left of the dying clay God allowed me without seeing to see God.
-Alice
You capture exactly the sense I had seeing these dolls in images. I haven't seen them in person either, and unlike you, I'm not sure I want to—but why not?! The instinct to be there as ground for both worship and doubt—bingo. Over and over again, we have seen artists trying to be there (Mel Gibson as movie director, Anselm as author of prayers), but why is it so hard for them to see what they want to see—except if they cannot depict it? (I'm struggling, you have described the dilemma so perfectly!) This, it seems to me, is something of what I have been trying to capture in our discussions involving the Incarnation, what makes it harder to talk about and grasp than the more abstract or mystical claims of the Temple imagery. Now, however, you have made me wonder also about why I preferred stuffed animals to baby dolls...
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