Da Vinci
was beginning to be talked about as more or less the correct thing.
This would hardly be the case before 1480, as Leonardo was not born
till 1452. By February 1481 the frescoes were already painted;
this is plain because the inscription - which, I think, may be taken
as a record made at the time that fealty was done - is scratched
over them. Peter De Sax, if he was selling his property, is not
likely to have had the frescoes painted just before he was going
away; I think it most likely, therefore, that they were painted in
1480, when the valley of Mesocco passed from the hands of the De
Sax family to those of the Triulci.
Underneath the inscription about the doing fealty there is
scratched in another hand, and very likely years after the event it
commemorates - "1548 fu liberata la Vallata." This date is
contradicted (and, I believe, corrected) by another inscription
hard by, also in another hand, which says -
"1549. La valle di Misocho compro la liberti da casa Triulcia per
2400 scuti."
This inscription is signed thus:-
[In the book there is a picture of four symbols]
Carlo a Marca had written his name along with three others in 1606
on another part of the frescoes.
