just arrived with their immediate attendants, and alighting at the
door of an inner recess, where a light burns over the manger of
Bethlehem, and in which is a simple but exquisite group of St.
Joseph, the Virgin, and Child. On the walls of the chapel are
painted in fresco a crowd of followers, the varieties of whose
costumes, attitudes, and figures are most cleverly portrayed. In
modelling the horses which form part of the central group, Ferrari
was assisted by his pupil Fermo Stella."--[Fermo Stella is not known
to have been a pupil of Gaudenzio's, and was probably established as
a painter before Gaudenzio began to work at all.]--"But the greatest
of all Gaudenzio's achievements is the large chapel of the
Crucifixion, a work of the most extraordinary character and masterly
execution. His first design for the subject, on the screen of the
Minorite Church, he has here carried out in life-like figures in
terra-cotta; twenty-six of which form the centre group, embodying the
events of the Passion; while round the walls are depicted with
wonderful power a crowd of spectators, numbering some 150, most of
whom are gazing at the central figure of the Saviour on the cross.
The variety of expression, costume, and character is almost infinite.
Round the roof are twenty angels in the most varied and graceful
attitudes, deserving of special attention; and also a hideous figure
of Lucifer."


Gaudenzio's devils are never quite satisfactory. His angels are
divine, and no one can make them cry as he does. When my friend Mr.
H. Festing Jones met a lovely child crying in the streets of Varallo
last summer, he said it was crying like one of Gaudenzio's angels;
and so it was. Gaudenzio was at home with everything human, and even
superhuman, if beautiful; if it was only a case of dealing with ugly,