I begin to understand now how we came to buy the Blenheim Raffaelle.

Finally, Sir Henry Layard says it is "very doubtful" whether any of
the statues were modelled or executed by Gaudenzio Ferrari at all.
It is a pity he has not thought it necessary give a single reason or
authority in support of a statement so surprising.

Some of these blunders appear in the edition of 1874 edited by Lady
Eastlake. In that edition the writer evidently knows nothing of any
figures in the Crucifixion Chapel, and Sir Henry Layard was unable to
supply the omission. The writer in the 1874 edition says that
"Gaudenzio is seen as a modeller of painted terra-cotta in the
stations ascending to the chapel (sic) on the Sacro Monte." It is
from this source that Sir Henry Layard got his idea that the chapels
are on the way up to the Sacro Monte, and that they are distinct from
those for which Gaudenzio painted frescoes on the top of the
mountain. Having perhaps seen photographs of the Sacro Monte at
Varese, where the chapels climb the hill along with the road, or
having perhaps actually seen the Madonna del Sasso at Locarno, where
small oratories with frescoes of the Stations of the Cross are placed
on the ascent, he thought those at Varallo might as well remain on
the ascent also, and that it would be safe to call them "stations."
It is the writer in the 1874 edition who first gave him or her self
airs about a cultivated eye; but he or she had the grace to put in a
saving clause to the effect that the designs in some instances were
"full of grace." True, Sir Henry Layard has never seen the designs;
nevertheless his eye is too highly cultivated to put up with this
clause; so it has disappeared, to make room, I suppose, for the
sentence in which so much accurate knowledge is displayed in respect