is chapel should
remind me, as it does, of the Circumcision chapel at Varallo, for
there are more figures here than space at Varallo will allow. It
cannot be pretended that any single figure is of extraordinary
merit, but amongst them they tell their story with excellent effect.
Two, those of St. Joseph and St. Anna (?), that doubtless were once
more important factors in the drama, are now so much in corners near
the window that they can hardly be seen.

5. The Dispute in the Temple. This subject is not treated at
Varallo. Here at Saas there are only six doctors now; whether or no
there were originally more cannot be determined.

6. The Agony in the Garden. Tabachetti had no chapel with this
subject at Varallo, and there is no resemblance between the Saas
chapel and that by D'Enrico. The figures are no doubt approximately
in their original positions, but I have no confidence that I have
rearranged them correctly. They were in such confusion when I first
saw them that the Rev. E. J. Selwyn and myself determined to
rearrange them. 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. I should think
more than one of these figures is actually carved in wood by
Tabachetti, allowance being made for the fact that he was working in
a material with which he was not familiar, and which no sculptor of
the highest rank has ever found congenial.

7. The Flagellation. Tabachetti has a chapel with this subject at
Varallo, and the Saas group is obviously a descent with modification
from his work there. The figure of Christ is so like the one at
Varallo that I think it must have been carved by Tabachetti himself.
The man with the hooked nose, who at Varallo is stooping to bind his
rods, is here upright: it was probably the intention to emphasize
him in the succeeding scenes as well as this, in the same way as he
has been emphasized at Varallo, but his nose got pared down in the
cutting of later scenes, and could not easily be added to. The man
binding Christ to the column at Varallo is repeated (longo
intervallo) here, and the whole work is one inspired by that at
Varallo, though no single figure except that of the Christ is
adhered to with any very great closeness. I thin