Cesare Vagarini

Cesare Vagarini
The Italian artist, Cesare Vagarini was Professor of Fine Art in Italy in the 1930s when he was employed by the Franciscans in the Holy Land to paint murals in a number of new churches being built. After Italy's entry into World War 2 he was interned by the Allies and sent with Signora Vagarini to Australia to the internment camp at Tatura in Victoria. At the intervention of the Australian Franciscans they were released from internment and came to Waverley early 1945 to begin Vagarini's monumental work in the church.

He used local models. The angels are based on the girls from St Clare's College, Waverley. Sister Margaret-Mary Morris RSJ, who was then a student at St Clare's, modelled for an angel.

Mary was modelled by Valerie Lindsay now Mrs Crowley. Val was walking past the church to go to ballet training when spotted by the artist.

Three paintings (Annunciation, Resurrection-Appearance and Assumption-Coronation) were finished whilst Cesare Vagarini was in Waverley. At the end of World War 2, international convention required that Signor Vagarini be repatriated which occurred in 1948. He returned to the Holy Land to complete his commission for the Franciscans there after he went back to Italy. The four remaining panels for Mary Immaculate (Visitation, Nativity, Adoration and Finding) were painted in his studio at San Gimignano and dispatched to Waverley over a period in the 1950s.