The Figures In The Chapels At Oropa Are Not As Good As The Best Of
Those At Varallo, But Some Of Them Are Very Nice Notwithstanding.
We Liked The Seventh Chapel The Best - The One Which Illustrates The
Sojourn Of The Virgin Mary In The Temple.
It contains forty-four
figures, and represents the Virgin on the point of completing her
education as head girl at a high-toned academy for young
gentlewomen.
All the young ladies are at work making mitres for
the bishop, or working slippers in Berlin wool for the new curate,
but the Virgin sits on a dais above the others on the same platform
with the venerable lady-principal, who is having passages read out
to her from some standard Hebrew writer. The statues are the work
of a local sculptor, named Aureggio, who lived at the end of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.
The highest chapel must be a couple of hundred feet above the main
buildings, and from near it there is an excellent bird's-eye view
of the sanctuary and the small plain behind; descending on to this
last, we entered the quadrangle from the north-west side and
visited the chapel in which the sacred image of the Madonna is
contained. We did not see the image itself, which is only exposed
to public view on great occasions. It is believed to have been
carved by St. Luke the Evangelist. I must ask the reader to
content himself with the following account of it which I take from
Marocco's work upon Oropa.:-
"That this statue of the Virgin is indeed by St. Luke is attested
by St. Eusebius, a man of eminent piety and no less enlightened
than truthful.
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