Essays on Life 



got Tabachetti to do the head, or that they 

 brought the head from some unused figure by 

 Tabachetti at Varallo, for I know no other 

 artist of the time and neighbourhood who 

 could have done it. 



2. A Magdalene in the desert. The desert 

 is a little coal-cellar of an arch, containing a 

 skull and a profusion of pink and white paper 

 bouquets, the two largest of which the Mag- 

 dalene is hugging while she is saying her 

 prayers. She is a very self-sufficient lady, 

 who we may be sure will not stay in the 

 desert a day longer than she can help, and 

 while there will flirt even with the skull if 

 she can find nothing better to flirt with. I 

 cannot think that her repentance is as yet 

 genuine, and as for her praying there is no 

 object in her doing so, for she does not want 

 anything. 



3. In the next desert there is a very beau- 

 tiful figure of St. John the Baptist kneeling 

 and looking upwards. This figure puzzles 

 me more than any other at Montrigone; it 

 appears to be of the fifteenth rather than the 



sixteenth century; it hardly reminds me of 



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