We may say, then, with some certainty, that the designer was a cultivated
and practised artist. We may also not less certainly conclude that he
was of Flemish origin, for the horses in the Journey to Calvary and
Crucifixion chapels, where alone there are any horses at all, are of
Flemish breed, with no trace of the Arab blood adopted by Gaudenzio at
Varallo. The character, moreover, of the villains is Northern--of the
Quentin Matsys, Martin Schongauer type, rather than Italian; the same sub-
Rubensesque feeling which is apparent in more than one chapel at Varallo
is not less evident here--especially in the Journey to Calvary and
Crucifixion chapels. 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. 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 abridgement 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 any one 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 woodcarver 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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