If they
want to wash their sheets and dry them, they do not send them to
Ealing, but lay them out in the first place that comes handy, and
nobody's bones are broken.
CHAPTER XV--Oropa (continued)
On the east side of the main block of buildings there is a grassy
slope adorned with chapels that contain illustrating scenes in the
history of the Virgin. These figures are of terra-cotta, for the
most part life-size, and painted up to nature. In some cases, if I
remember rightly, they have hemp or flax for hair, as at Varallo,
and throughout realism is aimed at as far as possible, not only in
the figures, but in the accessories. We have very little of the
same kind in England. In the Tower of London there is an effigy of
Queen Elizabeth going to the city to give thanks for the defeat of
the Spanish Armada. This looks as if it might have been the work
of some one of the Valsesian sculptors. There are also the figures
that strike the quarters of Sir John Bennett's city clock in
Cheapside. The automatic movements of these last-named figures
would have struck the originators of the Varallo chapels with envy.
They aimed at realism so closely that they would assuredly have had
recourse to clockwork in some one or two of their chapels; I cannot
doubt, for example, that they would have eagerly welcomed the idea
of making the cock crow to Peter by a cuckoo-clock arrangement, if
it had been presented to them.
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