Ivo Coelho sdb
NASHIK, JULY 6, 2008: Our Salesian houses in the province of Mumbai will be celebrating the feast of Dominic Savio these days. I think this is a good occasion to recount an interesting fact. Recently, when I spent a month at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome, I was fortunate to have met Don Ubaldo Gianetto sdb, now a retired professor of catechetics and getting on in years, as you can see in the photo. It might be interesting to know that, as a boy in the Institute of St John the Evangelist at Turin, Gianetto had been selected to be the 'model' following which a 'new' portrait of Dominic Savio was reconstructed, on the instructions of Don Caviglia. Don Gianetto himself was kind enough to supply me some information on the matter.
Don Caviglia, it seems, was rather upset about the image of Dominic Savio being propagated by the postulator of the cause, a certain Don Trione, an image that, according to him, was a historical falsification. He decided to do something concrete about it. Calling a young painter who had been a pupil of his, Mario Caffaro-Rore, he entrusted him with the task of creating a new and definitive image of Savio. This new image was to be done on the basis of the incision of Tomatis which Don Bosco had inserted into his biography of the boy as well as the eyewitness testimonies gathered for the process of canonization. But that was not all. Don Caviglia himself chose a boy who, according to him, had the right character and aspect, so far as could be gathered from the incision of Tomatis; this was Ubaldo Gianetto. Caffaro-Rore himself clarifies that the portrait he executed was not a question of a reproduction of Gianetto; rather, Gianetto served as a model from which to reconstruct an image as faithful as possible to the incision of Tomatis.
Caffaro-Rore's first attempt was, in a sense, sabotaged on orders 'from above'; he was asked to make Dominic look older, and was told that he should look like a modest Oratory boy rather than as a waiter…. In the end, however, it would seem that Don Caviglia's 'iron will and dogged persistence' paid off, and the first portrait became the standard model for most subsequent images of the little saint; a warmly appreciative letter from Don Pietro Ricaldone, Rector Major, to Caviglia bears witness to this fact. The painter himself recalls with emotion that he subsequently received countless orders, many of them from outside Salesian circles, for new portraits of Savio. So that is the little story of Dominic Savio and Ubaldo Gianetto. I guess those who die young remain young forever, in God's eternity. But I kept wondering, in that month at the UPS, whether Savio would have looked like crusty old Don Gianetto if he had been granted more years…
NASHIK, JULY 6, 2008: Our Salesian houses in the province of Mumbai will be celebrating the feast of Dominic Savio these days. I think this is a good occasion to recount an interesting fact. Recently, when I spent a month at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome, I was fortunate to have met Don Ubaldo Gianetto sdb, now a retired professor of catechetics and getting on in years, as you can see in the photo. It might be interesting to know that, as a boy in the Institute of St John the Evangelist at Turin, Gianetto had been selected to be the 'model' following which a 'new' portrait of Dominic Savio was reconstructed, on the instructions of Don Caviglia. Don Gianetto himself was kind enough to supply me some information on the matter.Don Caviglia, it seems, was rather upset about the image of Dominic Savio being propagated by the postulator of the cause, a certain Don Trione, an image that, according to him, was a historical falsification. He decided to do something concrete about it. Calling a young painter who had been a pupil of his, Mario Caffaro-Rore, he entrusted him with the task of creating a new and definitive image of Savio. This new image was to be done on the basis of the incision of Tomatis which Don Bosco had inserted into his biography of the boy as well as the eyewitness testimonies gathered for the process of canonization. But that was not all. Don Caviglia himself chose a boy who, according to him, had the right character and aspect, so far as could be gathered from the incision of Tomatis; this was Ubaldo Gianetto. Caffaro-Rore himself clarifies that the portrait he executed was not a question of a reproduction of Gianetto; rather, Gianetto served as a model from which to reconstruct an image as faithful as possible to the incision of Tomatis.
Caffaro-Rore's first attempt was, in a sense, sabotaged on orders 'from above'; he was asked to make Dominic look older, and was told that he should look like a modest Oratory boy rather than as a waiter…. In the end, however, it would seem that Don Caviglia's 'iron will and dogged persistence' paid off, and the first portrait became the standard model for most subsequent images of the little saint; a warmly appreciative letter from Don Pietro Ricaldone, Rector Major, to Caviglia bears witness to this fact. The painter himself recalls with emotion that he subsequently received countless orders, many of them from outside Salesian circles, for new portraits of Savio. So that is the little story of Dominic Savio and Ubaldo Gianetto. I guess those who die young remain young forever, in God's eternity. But I kept wondering, in that month at the UPS, whether Savio would have looked like crusty old Don Gianetto if he had been granted more years…