time has had abundant opportunities without these.  I will conclude my notice of this chapel by saying that on the left, above the door through which the under-under-nurse’s drudge is about to pass, there is a good painted terra-cotta bust, said—­but I believe on no authority—­to be a portrait of Giovanni d’Enrico.  Others say that the Virgin’s grandmother is Giovanni d’Enrico, but this is even more absurd than supposing her to be St. Joachim.

The next chapel to the Birth of the Virgin is that of the Sposalizio.  There is no figure here which suggests Tabachetti, but still there are some very good ones.  The best have no taint of barocco; the man who did them, whoever he may have been, had evidently a good deal of life and go, was taking reasonable pains, and did not know too much.  Where this is the case no work can fail to please.  Some of the figures have real hair and some terra-cotta.  There is no fresco background worth mentioning.  A man sitting on the steps of the altar with a book on his lap, and holding up his hand to another, who is leaning over him and talking to him, is among the best figures; some of the disappointed suitors who are breaking their wands are also very good.

The angel in the Annunciation chapel, which comes next in order, is a fine, burly, ship’s-figurehead, commercial-hotel sort of being enough, but the Virgin is very ordinary.  There is no real hair and no fresco background, only three dingy old blistered pictures of no interest whatever.

In the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth there are three pleasing subordinate lady attendants, two to the left and one to the right of the principal figures; but these figures themselves are not satisfactory.  There is no fresco background.  Some of the figures have real hair and some terra-cotta.

In the Circumcision and Purification chapel—­for both these events seem contemplated in the one that follows—­there are doves, but there is neither dog nor knife.  Still Simeon, who has the infant Saviour in his arms, is looking at him in a way which can only mean that, knife or no knife, the matter is not going to end here.  At Varallo they have now got a dreadful knife for the Circumcision chapel.  They had none last winter.  What they have now got would do very well to kill a bullock with, but could not be used professionally with safety for any animal smaller than a rhinoceros.  I imagine that someone was sent to Novara to buy a knife, and that, thinking it was for the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, he got the biggest he could see.  Then when he brought it back people said “chow” several times, and put it upon the table and went away.