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Updated: June 7, 2025
The idea of showing other horsemen and followers coming up from behind, whose heads can be seen over the crown of the interposing hill, is singularly effective as suggesting a number of others that are unseen, nor can I conceive that anyone but the original designer would follow Tabachetti's Varallo design with as much closeness as it has been followed here, and yet make such a brilliantly successful modification.
On examining the figures I found them more heavily constructed than Tabachetti's are, with smaller holes for taking out superfluous clay, and more finished on the off-sides. Marocco says the sculptor is not known. I looked in vain for any date or signature.
It is by one in whom Flemish and Italian influences are alike equally predominant; by one who was saturated with Tabachetti's Varallo work, and who can improve upon it, but over whom the other Varallo sculptors have no power. The style of the work is of the sixteenth and not of the eighteenth century with a few obvious exceptions that suit the year 1709 exceedingly well.
There can hardly, therefore, be a doubt that the artist was a Fleming who had worked for several years in Italy. It is also evident that he had Tabachetti's work at Varallo well in his mind. When, however, as in the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and other chapels, the work at Varallo is by another than Tabachetti, no allusion is made to it.
Tabachetti, on the other hand, delighted in women; if they were young he made them comely and engaging, if they were old he gave them dignity and individual character, and the under-nurse is much more in accordance with Tabachetti's habitual mental attitude than with D'Enrico's or Giacomo Ferro's.
As it stands the essay requires so much revision that I have decided to omit it altogether and to postpone giving English readers a full account of Tabachetti's career until a second edition of Butler's "Ex Voto," in which Tabachetti's work is discussed in detail, is required.
This group, again, bears no analogy to the Salutation chapel at Varallo, in which Tabachetti's share was so small that it cannot be considered as in any way his. It is not to be expected, therefore, that the Saas chapel should follow the Varallo one. The figures, four in number, are pleasing and well arranged. St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and St. Zacharias are all talking at once.
On examining the figures I found them more heavily constructed than Tabachetti's are, with smaller holes for taking out superfluous clay, and more finished on the off-sides. Marocco says the sculptor is not known. I looked in vain for any date or signature.
Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary at Varallo is again the source from which the present work was taken, but, as I have already said, it has been modified in reproduction.
It is by one in whom Flemish and Italian influences are alike equally predominant; by one who was saturated with Tabachetti's Varallo work, and who can improve upon it, but over whom the other Varallo sculptors have no power. The style of the work is of the sixteenth and not of the eighteenth century with a few obvious exceptions that suit the year 1709 exceedingly well.
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