. Alps and sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (Op. 6.) . not send them to Ealing, but laythem out in the first place that comes handy, andnobodys bones are broken. CHAPTER XVI. or op A —con tin ued. On the east side of the main block of buildings thereis a grassy slope adorned with chapels that con-tain figures illustrating scenes in the history of theVirgin. These figures are of terra-cotta, for the mostpart life-size, and painted up to nature. In somecases, if I remember rightly, they have hemp orflax for hair, as at Varallo, and throughout realismis aimed at as far as possible, n
. Alps and sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (Op. 6.) . not send them to Ealing, but laythem out in the first place that comes handy, andnobodys bones are broken. CHAPTER XVI. or op A —con tin ued. On the east side of the main block of buildings thereis a grassy slope adorned with chapels that con-tain figures illustrating scenes in the history of theVirgin. These figures are of terra-cotta, for the mostpart life-size, and painted up to nature. In somecases, if I remember rightly, they have hemp orflax for hair, as at Varallo, and throughout realismis aimed at as far as possible, not only in the figures, but in the accessories. Wehave very little of the samekind in E norland. In theTower of London there isan effigy of Queen Elizabethgoing to the city to givethanks for the defeat of the Spanish looks as if it might have been the workof some one of the Valsesian sculptors. There arealso the figures that strike the quarters of Sir JohnBennetts city clock in Cheapside. The automaticmovements of these last-named figures would have. .£3 : : CHAPELS AT OROPA. OROPA. 229 struck the originators of the Varallo chapels with aimed at realism so closely that they wouldassuredly have had recourse to clockwork in some oneor two of their chapels; I cannot doubt, for example,that they would have eagerly welcomed the idea ofmaking the cock crow to Peter by a cuckoo-clockarrangement, if it had been presented to them. Thisopens up the whole question of realism versus con-ventionalism in art—a subject much too large to betreated here. As I have said, the founders of these Italian chapelsaimed at realism. Each chapel was intended as anillustration, and the desire was to bring the wholescene more vividly before the faithful by combiningthe picture, the statue, and the effect of a scene uponthe stage in a single work of art. The attempt wouldbe an ambitious one, though made once only in aneighbourhood, but in most of the places in NorthItaly where any
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