These frescoes appear to me to have been not so much restored as
repainted--that is to say, where they are not almost entirely gone.
The green colour that now prevails in the shadows and half-tones is
alien to Gaudenzio, and cannot be accepted as his. I should say,
however, that my friend Signor Arienta of Varallo differs from me on
this point. At any rate, the work is now little more than a ruin,
and the terra-cotta Pieta is among the least satisfactory groups on
the Sacro Monte. Mr. King continues:-


"In the Chapel of the Adoration of the Magi we have a work of higher
merit, giving evidence of his studies under Raphael."


Here Mr. King is in some measure mistaken. The frescoes in the Magi
Chapel are indeed greatly finer than those in the present Pieta, but
they were painted from thirty to forty years later, when Gaudenzio
was in his prime, and it is to years of intervening incessant effort
and practice, not to any study under Raphael, that the enlargement of
style and greater freedom of design is due. Gaudenzio never studied
under Raphael; he may have painted for him, and perhaps did so--no
one knows whether he did or did not--but in every branch of his art
he was incomparably Raphael's superior, and must have known it
perfectly well.

Returning to Mr. King, with whom, in the main, I am in cordial
sympathy, we read:-


"The group of ten figures in terra-cotta represents the three kings