According to both Fassola and Torrotti, the first chapel erected on the Sacro Monte was that of S. Francesco, with its adjacent reproduction of the Holy Sepulchre. According to Bordiga the first was the entombment, containing nine figures of wood, or, as the earlier writers say, eight. Bordiga probably means that the Entombment was the earliest chapel with figures in it, and the other writers that the St. Francis chapel was the first in which mass was said. These last speak very highly of the wooden figures in the Entombment chapel, and so more guardedly does Bordiga. I will return to them when I come to the present group of nine by Luigi Marchesi, a sculptor of Saltrio, which were substituted for the old ones in 1826. The early writers say that there was no fresco background to this chapel, and this suggests that the attempt to combine sculpture and painting was not part of the initial scheme, though soon engrafted on to it, inasmuch as this is the only chapel about which I find it expressly stated by early writers that it was without a fresco background (“senza pittura alcuna”). {57} Though there was no fresco background, Bordiga says there was a fresco painted, doubtless done very early in his career, by Gaudenzio Ferrari, outside the chapel just above the iron grating through which the visitor must look. Probably the original scheme was to have sculptured figures inside the chapels, and frescoes outside; by an easy modification these last were transferred from the outside to the inside, and so designed as to form an integral part of the composition: the daring scheme of combining the utmost resources of both painting and sculpture in a single work was thus gradually evolved rather than arrived at _per saltum_. Assuming, however, the currently received date of 1503 or 1504 as correct for Gaudenzio’s frescoes in the present Pietà chapel, the conception as carried out in the greater number of the existing chapels had then attained the shape from which no subsequent departure was made. Returning to Gaudenzio’s fresco outside the S. Francesco chapel, Bordiga says that Caccia gave the following lines on this work:— “Sotto un vicino portico di fuore Portato a sepelir è di pittura Un Cristo; che non mai Zeuxi pittore Di questo finse piu bella figura, Che un San Francesco possa pareggiare, Pinto più inanzi sopra d’un altare.” The reader will note that the fresco is here expressly stated to be “di fuore” or outside and not inside the chapel.