isting 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
{195} became insane about the year 1586 or early in 1587, after
having just begun the Salutation chapel. I have explained in Ex
Voto that I do not believe this story. I have no doubt that
Tabachetti was declared to be mad, but I believe this to have been
due to an intrigue, set on foot in order to get a foreign artist out
of the way, and to secure the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, at
that precise time undertaken, for Gio. Ant. Paracca, who was an
Italian.

Or he may have been sacrificed in order to facilitate the return of
the workers in stucco whom he had superseded on the Sacro Monte. He
may have been goaded into some imprudence which was seized upon as a
pretext for shutting him up; at any rate, the fact that when in 1587
he inherited his father's property at Dinant, his trustee (he being
expressly stated to be "expatrie") was "datif," "dativus," appointed
not by himself but by the court, lends colour to the statement that
he was not his own master at the time; for in later kindred deeds,
now at Namur, he appoints his