doubt that the artist was a
Fleming who had worked for several years in Italy.

It is also evident that he had Tabachetti's work at Varallo well in
his mind. For not only does he adopt certain details of costume (I
refer particularly to the treatment of soldiers' tunics) which are
peculiar to Tabachetti at Varallo, but whenever he treats a subject
which Tabachetti had treated at Varallo, as in the Flagellation,
Crowning with Thorns, and Journey to Calvary chapels, the work at
Saas is evidently nothing but a somewhat modified abridgment of that
at Varallo. When, however, as in the Annunciation, the Nativity,
the Crucifixion, and other chapels, the work at Varallo is by
another than Tabachetti, no allusion is made to it. The Saas artist
has Tabachetti's Varallo work at his finger-ends, but betrays no
acquaintance whatever with Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gio. Ant. Paracca, or
Giovanni d'Enrico.

Even, moreover, when Tabachetti's work at Varallo is being most
obviously drawn from, as in the Journey to Calvary chapel, the Saas
version differs materially from that at Varallo, and is in some
respects an improvement on it. The idea of showing other horsemen
and followers coming up from behind, whose heads can be seen over
the crown of the interposing hill, is singularly effective as
suggesting a number of others that are unseen, nor can I conceive
that anyone but the original designer would follow Tabachetti's
Varallo 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 wood-carver 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 ex