" {9} I propose to confine myself here to the
ten or a dozen chapels containing life-sized terra-cotta figures,
painted up to nature, that form one of the main features of the
place. At a 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.
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