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. This opens up the whole question of realism
_versus_ conventionalism in art--a subject much too large to be treated
here.
As I have said, the founders of these Italian chapels aimed at realism.
Each chapel was intended as an illustration, and the desire was to bring
the whole scene more vividly before the faithful by combining the
picture, the statue, and the effect of a scene upon the stage in a single
work of art. The attempt would be an ambitious one though made once only
in a neighbourhood, but in most of the places in North Italy where
anything of the kind has been done, the people have not been content with
a single illustration; it has been their scheme to take a mountain as
though it had been a book or wall and cover it with illustrations.
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