A Medieval Girl School - Page 2

first glance, perhaps, all these chapels will seem
uninteresting; I venture to think, however, that some, if not most
of them, though falling a good deal short of the best work at
Varallo and Crea, are still in their own way of considerable
importance. The first chapel with which we need concern ourselves
is numbered 4, and shows the Conception of the Virgin Mary. It
represents St. Anne as kneeling before a terrific dragon or, as the
Italians call it, "insect," about the size of a Crystal Palace
pleiosaur. This "insect" is supposed to have just had its head
badly crushed by St. Anne, who seems to be begging its pardon. The
text "Ipsa conteret caput tuum" is written outside the chapel. The
figures have no artistic interest. As regards dragons being called
insects, the reader may perhaps remember that the island of S.
Giulio, in the Lago d'Orta, was infested with insetti, which S.
Giulio destroyed, and which appear, in a fresco underneath the
church on the island, to have been monstrous and ferocious dragons;
but I cannot remember whether their bodies are divided into three
sections, and whether or no they have exactly six legs--without
which, I am told, they cannot be true insects.

The fifth chapel represents the birth of the Virgin. Having
obtained permission to go inside it, I found the date 1715 cut large
and deep on the back of one figure before baking, and I imagine that
this date covers the whole. There is a Queen Anne feeling
throughout the composition, and if we were told that the sculptor
and Francis Bird, sculptor of the statue in front of St. Paul's
Cathedral, had studied under the same master, we could very well
believe it. The apartment in which the Virgin was born is spacious,
and in striking contrast to the one in which she herself gave birth
to the Redeemer. St. Anne occupies the centre of the composition,
in an enormous bed; on her right there is a lady of the George
Cruikshank style of beauty, and on the left an older person. Both
are gesticulating and impressing upon St. Anne the enormous
obligation she has just conferred upon mankind; they seem also to be
imploring her not to overtax her strength, but, strange to say, they
are giving her neither flowers nor anything to eat and drink. I
know no other birth of the Virgin in which St. Anne wants so little
keeping up.

I have explained in my book "Ex Voto," {10} but should perhaps
repeat here, that the distinguishing characteristic of the Birth of
the Virgin, as rendered by Valsesian artists, is that St. Anne
always has eggs immediately after the infant is born, and usually a
good deal more, whereas the Madonna never has anything to eat or
drink. The eggs are in accordance with a