We have, then, to face on the one hand the authority of all writers about the Sacro Monte, and on the other, the exceedingly explicit claim made by Rossetti himself in the inscription given above. Probably Bargnola began the work and Rossetti finished it. It is not likely that the extremely circumstantial statement of Fassola should be without any foundation, but again it is not likely that Rossetti would have claimed the work if he had not done at any rate the greater part of it. If Bargnola died about 1587, he could not have done much, for in the 1586–1587 edition of Caccia it is expressly stated that the chapel alone was done “_Di questa è fatta solamente la chiesa_.” And if he had lived to finish the work, he, and not Rossetti, would have signed it. We may conclude, then, with some certainty, that he died before the chapel was finished, but may think it nevertheless probable that he was originally commissioned to do it. The question resolves itself, therefore, into how much he did, and how soon Rossetti took the work over. It must be remembered that Michael Angelo Rossetti is a name absolutely unknown to us. Zani, Nagler, Cicognara, Lübke, Perkins, and all the authorities I have consulted omit to mention him. I find abundant reference to three, and indeed five, painters who were called Rossetti, two of whom—doubtless nephews of Michael Angelo Rossetti,—did the frescoes in this very chapel we are considering, but no one says one syllable about any Michael Angelo Rossetti, and it is a bold thing to suppose that an unknown man should have succeeded so admirably with such a very important work as the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, and have lived as the inscription shows to the age at least of fifty-seven without leaving a single trace in any other quarter whatever. The work, at any rate in many parts, is that of one who has been working in clay all his life, and was a thorough master of his craft, and this makes it all the more difficult to suppose it to be a single _tour de force_. On the other hand, such _tours de force_ were not uncommon among medieval Italian workmen. Gaudenzio Ferrari’s work in sculpture is little else than a succession of _tours de force_, and in other parts of the work we are now considering, there is a certain archaism which suggests growing rather than matured power.