It is also evident that he had Tabachetti’s work at Varallo well in his mind.  For not only does he adopt certain details of costume (I refer particularly to the treatment of soldiers’ tunics) which are peculiar to Tabachetti at Varallo, but whenever he treats a subject which Tabachetti had treated at Varallo, as in the Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, and Journey to Calvary chapels, the work at Saas is evidently nothing but a somewhat modified abridgment of that at Varallo.  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.  The Saas artist has Tabachetti’s Varallo work at his finger-ends, but betrays no acquaintance whatever with Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gio.  Ant.  Paracca, or Giovanni d’Enrico.

Even, moreover, when Tabachetti’s work at Varallo is being most obviously drawn from, as in the Journey to Calvary chapel, the Saas version differs materially from that at Varallo, and is in some respects an improvement on it.  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.  The stumbling, again, of one horse (a detail almost hidden, according to Tabachetti’s wont) is a touch which Tabachetti himself might add, but which no Saas wood-carver who was merely adapting from a reminiscence of Tabachetti’s Varallo chapel would be likely to introduce.  These considerations have convinced me that the designer of the chapels at Saas is none other than Tabachetti himself, who, as has been now conclusively shown, was a native of Dinant, in Belgium.

The Saas chronicler, indeed, avers that the chapels were not built till 1709—­a statement apparently corroborated by a date now visible on one chapel; but we must remember that the chronicler did not write until a century or so later than 1709, and though indeed, his statement may have been taken from the lost earlier manuscript of 1738, we know nothing about this either one way or the other.  The writer may have gone by the still existing 1709 on the Ascension chapel, whereas this date may in fact have referred to a restoration, and not to an original construction.  There is nothing, as I have said, in the choice of the chapel on which the date appears, to suggest that it was intended to govern the others.  I have explained that the work is isolated and exotic.  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