9. Sta. Veronica. This and the next succeeding chapels are the most
important of the series. Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary at Varallo is
again the source from which the present work was taken, but, as I have
already said, it has been modified in reproduction. Mount Calvary is
still shown, as at Varallo, towards the left-hand corner of the work, but
at Saas it is more towards the middle than at Varallo, so that horsemen
and soldiers may be seen coming up behind it--a stroke that deserves the
name of genius none the less for the manifest imperfection with which it
has been carried into execution. There are only three horses fully
shown, and one partly shown. They are all of the heavy Flemish type
adopted by Tabachetti at Varallo. The man kicking the fallen Christ and
the goitred man (with the same teeth missing), who are so conspicuous in
the Varallo Journey to Calvary, reappear here, only the kicking man has
much less nose than at Varallo, probably because (as explained) the nose
got whittled away and could not be whittled back again. 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. The work is still a very striking one,
notwithstanding its translation into wood and the decay into which it has
been allowed to fall; nor can it fail to impress the visitor who is
familiar with this class of art as coming from a man of extraordinary
dramatic power and command over the almost impossible art of composing
many figures together effectively in all-round sculpture. Whether all
the figures are even now as Tabachetti left them I cannot determine, but
Mr. Selwyn has restored Simon the Cyrenian to the position in which he
obviously ought to stand, and between us we have got the chapel into
something more like order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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