design with as much closeness as it has been
followed here, and yet make such a brilliantly successful modification.
The stumbling, again, of one horse (a detail almost hidden, according to
Tabachetti's wont) is a touch which Tabachetti himself might add, but
which no Saas woodcarver who was merely adapting from a reminiscence of
Tabachetti's Varallo chapel would be likely to introduce. These
considerations have convinced me that the designer of the chapels at Saas
is none other than Tabachetti himself, who, as has been now conclusively
shown, was a native of Dinant, in Belgium.

The Saas chronicler, indeed, avers that the chapels were not built till
1709--a statement apparently corroborated by a date now visible on one
chapel; but we must remember that the chronicler did not write until a
century or so later than 1709, and though, indeed, his statement may have
been taken from the lost earlier manuscript of 1738, we know nothing
about this either one way or the other. The writer may have gone by the
still existing 1709 on the Ascension chapel, whereas this date may in
fact have referred to a restoration, and not to an original construction.
There is nothing, as I have said, in the choice of the chapel on which
the date appears, to suggest that it was intended to govern the others. I
have explained that the work is isolated and exotic. It is by one in
whom Flemish and Italian influences are alike equally predominant; by one
who was saturated with Tabachetti's Varallo work, and who can improve
upon it, but over whom the other Varallo sculptors have no power. The
style of the work is of the sixteenth and not of the eighteenth
century--with a few obvious exceptions that suit the year 1709
exceedingly well. Against such considerations as these, a statement made
at the beginning of this century referring to a century earlier, and a
promiscuous date upon one chapel, can carry but little weight. I shall
assume, therefore, henceforward, that we have here groups designed in a
plastic material by Tabachetti, and reproduced in wood by the best local
wood-sculptor available, with the exception of a few figures cut by the
artist himself.

We ask, then, at what period in his life did Tabachetti design these
chapels, and what led to his coming to such an out-of-the-way place as
Saas at all? We should remember that, according both to Fassola and
Torrotti (writing in 1671 and 1686 respectively), Tabachetti {14} became
insane ab