So are some even at Varallo itself, but assuredly not most of them. One—I mean, of course, Tabachetti’s Journey to Calvary, which contains about forty figures rather larger than life, and nine horses,—is of such superlative excellence as regards composition and dramatic power, to say nothing of the many admirable individual figures comprised in it, that it is not too much to call it the most astounding work that has ever been achieved in sculpture. I know that this is strong language, but have considered my words as much as I care to do. As Michael Angelo’s Medicean Chapel errs on the side of over-subtlety, refinement, and the exaggerated idealism from which indeed there is but one step to the _barocco_, so does Tabachetti’s on that of over-downrightness, or, as a critic with a cultivated eye might say, with perhaps a show of reason at a first glance, even of vulgarity. Nevertheless, if I could have my choice whether to have created Michael Angelo’s chapel or Tabachetti’s, I should not for a moment hesitate about choosing Tabachetti’s, though it drove its unhappy creator mad, which the Medicean chapel never did by Michael Angelo. Three other chapels by Tabachetti are also admirable works. Two chapels contain very extensive frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari, than which it is safe to say that no finer works of their kind have been preserved to us. The statues by Gaudenzio in the same chapels are all interesting, and some remarkably good. Their arrangement in the Crucifixion Chapel, if not marked by the superlative dramatic power of Tabachetti, is still solemn, dignified, and impressive. The frescoes by Morazzone in Tabachetti’s great chapel belong to the decline of art, but there is still much in them that is excellent. So there is in some of those by Tanzio and Melchiorre, Giovanni d’Enrico’s brothers. Giovanni d’Enrico’s Nailing of Christ to the Cross, with its sixty figures all rather larger than life, challenges a comparison with Tabachetti’s, which it will not bear; still it is a great work. So are several of his other chapels. I am not so thoroughly in sympathy with the work of any of the three brothers d’Enrico as I should like to be, but they cannot be ignored or spoken of without respect. There are excellent figures in some of the chapels by less well-known men; and lastly, there is the Vecchietto, perhaps the finest figure of all, who looks as if he had dropped straight from the heavens towards which he is steadfastly regarding, and of whom nothing is known except that, if not by Tabachetti, he must be by a genius in some respects even more commanding, who has left us nothing save this Melchizedek of a figure, without father, mother, or descent.