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This essay requires to be illustrated in so elaborate a manner that it was impossible to include it in a book of this size. The second essay, which is a sketch of the career of the sculptor Tabachetti, was published as the first section of an article, entitled "A Sculptor and a Shrine," of which the second part is here given under the title "The Sanctuary of Montrigone."

The treatment here presents no more analogy to that of the same subject at Varallo than is inevitable in the nature of the subject. The Annunciation figures at Varallo have proved to be mere draped dummies with wooden heads; Tabachetti, even though he did the heads, which he very likely did, would take no interest in the Varallo work with the same subject.

It confirms therefore my opinion as to the designer of the Saas chapels to find in them no trace of the Varallo Crucifixion, while the kind of tunic which at Varallo is only found in chapels wherein Tabachetti worked again appears here. The work is in a deplorable state of decay. Mr.

They have doubtless been shifted more than once since Tabachetti left them. The sleeping figures are all good. St. James is perhaps a little prosaic. One Roman soldier who is coming into the garden with a lantern, and motioning silence with his hand, does duty for the others that are to follow him.

Tabachetti left his native Dinant in 1585, and from that date until his death he appears to have lived chiefly at Varallo and Crea. In 1588 he was working at Crea; in 1590 he was at Varallo and again in 1594, 1599, and 1602. He died in 1615, possibly during a visit to Varallo, though his home at the time was at Costigliole, near Asti.

I do not think there can be a doubt but that Tabachetti cut this figure himself, as also those of the Magdalene and St. John, who stand at the foot of the cross. The thieves are coarsely executed, with no very obvious distinction between the penitent and the impenitent one, except that there is a fiend painted on the ceiling over the impenitent thief.

There are only three horses fully shown, and one partly shown. They are all of the heavy Flemish type adopted by Tabachetti at Varallo. I observe that the kind of lapelled tunic which Tabachetti, and only Tabachetti, adopts at Varallo, is adopted for the centurion in this chapel, and indeed throughout the Saas chapels this particular form of tunic is the most usual for a Roman soldier.

Or he may have been sacrificed in order to facilitate the return of the workers in stucco whom he had superseded on the Sacro Monte. I suppose, then, that Tabachetti was shut up in a madhouse at Varallo for a considerable time, during which I can find no trace of him, but that eventually he escaped or was released.

It confirms therefore my opinion as to the designer of the Saas chapels to find in them no trace of the Varallo Crucifixion, while the kind of tunic which at Varallo is only found in chapels wherein Tabachetti worked again appears here. The work is in a deplorable state of decay. Mr.

I examined the treatment of the hair, which is terra-cotta, and compared it with all other like hair in the chapels above described; I could find nothing like it, and think it most likely that Giacomo Ferro did the figure, and got Tabachetti to do the head, or that they brought the head from some unused figure by Tabachetti at Varallo, for I know no other artist of the time and neighbourhood who could have done it.