1944 - 1948

Cesare Vagarini was an Italian artist and restoration expert who, while a prisoner of war, created a series of frescoes for Waverley’s State Heritage-listed Mary Immaculate Church.

In the 1930s, friars of the Franciscan order in Palestine – the Holy Land – commissioned Vagarini, from the prestigious Brera Academy in Milan, to restore frescos in several churches and paint new ones, including at the Church of the Visitation in Ein Karim. In June 1940, after Italy entered World War II as part of the German Axis alliance, Vagrini and his wife, Maria, were arrested and interned by British authorities.

The couple were brought to Australia on the Queen Elizabeth, arriving in August 1941 before being sent to a camp for enemy aliens at Tatura, in Victoria. There, he began painting, sketching and building props for a puppet theatre. A Franciscans priest ministering to prisoners, Friar Minor Salvatore Ciliano, noticed his talent.

In December 1944, Reverend Bernard Nolan, from Mary Immaculate Friary, Waverley, succeeded in having an application for Vagarini’s release approved, on the condition that he paint seven multi-panel large oil paintings for Mary Immaculate Church. Waverley’s Greco-Roman church was completed in 1913, its Neo-Classical façade added in 1929. It remains the mother church of the Association of Franciscan Friars in Australia.

The basilica-like building was an ideal setting for a fresco artist. Vagarini arrived in early 1945 to begin ‘The Franciscan Crown (or Rosary) of the Seven Franciscan Joys of Our Lady’. Local parishioners, including students at nearby St Clare's College modelled for Vagarini’s fresco angels. The model for Mary was Valerie Lindsay, who was on her way to ballet rehearsal when Vagarini spotted her. He completed three of the panels – The Annunciation, The Resurrection-Appearance and The Assumption-Coronation – during the three years he and his wife spent in Waverley.

In 1948, they returned to Palestine to complete the pre-war commission, then returned to his studio in San Gimignano, Italy, where he finished the Waverley paintings – The Visitation, The Nativity, The Adoration and The Finding.

One of the panels – The Immaculate Conception and the Apparition of Christ to Mary – was shortlisted for the Art Gallery of NSW Sulman Prize for murals.

Courtesy the Waverley Library Local Studies Collection.