Febraio" to the present century. The lowest part of
the fresco must be six feet from the ground, and it must rise at
least ten or a dozen feet more, so the writings upon it are not
immediately obvious, but they will be found on looking at all
closely.
It is plain, therefore, that when the facciata paired the original
fresco was preserved; it cannot be, as I had supposed, the work of
a local painter who had taken his ideas of rocks and trees from the
frescoes inside the church. That I am right in supposing the
curious blanc-mange-mould-looking objects on either side St.
Christopher's legs to be intended for rocks will be clear to any
one who has seen the frescoes inside the church, where mountains
with trees and towns upon them are treated on exactly the same
principle. I cannot think the artist can have been quite easy in
his mind about them.
On entering the church the left-hand wall is found to be covered
with the most remarkable series of frescoes in the Italian Grisons.
They are disposed in three rows, one above the other, occupying the
whole wall of the church as far as the chancel. The top row
depicts a series of incidents prior to the Crucifixion, and is cut
up by the pulpit at the chancel end. These events are treated so
as to form a single picture.
The second row is in several compartments. There is a saint in
armour on horseback, life-size, killing a dragon, and a queen who
seems to have been leading the dragon by a piece of red tape
buckled round its neck - unless, indeed, the dragon is supposed to
have been leading the queen. The queen still holds the tape and
points heavenward. Next to this there is a very nice saint on
horse-back, who is giving a cloak to a man who is nearly naked.
Then comes St. Michael trampling on the dragon, and holding a pair
of scales in his hand, in which are two little souls of a man and
of a woman. The dragon has a hook in his hand, and thrusting this
up from under St. Michael, he hooks it on to the edge of the scale
with the woman in it, and drags her down. The man, it seems, will
escape. Next to this there is a compartment in which a monk is
offering a round thing to St. Michael, who does not seem to care
much about it; there are other saints and martyrs in this
compartment, and St. Anthony with his pig, and Sta. Lucia holding a
box with two eyes in it, she being patroness of the eyesight as
well as of mariners. Lastly, there is the Adoration, ruined by the
pulpit.
Below this second compartment are twelve frescoes, each about three
and a half feet square, representing the twelve months - from a
purely secular point of view. January is a man making and hanging
up sausages; February, a man chopping wood; March, a youth
proclaiming spring with two horns to his mouth, and his hair flying
all abroad; April is a young man on horseback carrying a flower in
his hand; May, a knight, not in armour, going out hawking with his
hawk on one finger, his bride on a pillion behind him, and a dog
beside the horse; June is a mower; July, another man reaping
twenty-seven ears of corn; August, an invalid going to see his
doctor; October, a man knocking down chestnuts from a tree and a
woman catching them; November is hidden and destroyed by the
pulpit; December is a butcher felling an ox with a hatchet.
We could find no signature of the artist, nor any date on the
frescoes to show when they were painted; but while looking for a
signature we found a name scratched with a knife or stone, and
rubbed the tracing which I reproduce, greatly reduced, here; Jones
thinks the last line was not written by Lazarus Bovollinus, but by
another who signs A. T.
[At this point in the book there is a brass rubbing. It looks
like: Lazarus Bouollins 1534 30 Augusti explenit 20 Amurs ...]
The Boelini were one of the principal families in Mesocco. Gaspare
Boelini, the head of the house, had been treacherously thrown over
the castle walls and killed by order of Giovanni Giacomo Triulci in
the year 1525, because as chancellor of the valley he declined to
annul the purchase of the castle of Mesocco, which Triulci had
already sold to the people of Mesocco, and for which he had been in
great part paid. His death is recorded on a stone placed by the
roadside under the castle.
Examining the wall further, we found a little to the right that the
same Lazzaro Bovollino (I need hardly say that "Bovollino" is
another way of spelling "Boelini") scratched his name again some
sixteen years later, as follows:-
1550 adj (?)
26 Decemb. morijm (?)
Lazzaro Bovollino
*
|
15 L - - - - - - B 50
The handwriting is not so good as it was when he wrote his name
before; but we observed, with sympathy, that the writer had dropped
his Latin. Close by is scratched "Gullielmo Bo."
The mark between the two letters L and B was the family mark of the
Boelini, each family having its mark, a practice of which further
examples will be given presently.
We looked still more, and on the border of one of the frescoes we
discovered -
Veneris.
"1481 die Jovis viiIj Februarij hoines di Misochi et Soazza
fecerunt fidelitatem in manibus di Johani Jacobi Triulzio,"
- "The men of Mesocco and Soazza did fealty to John Jacob Triulci
on Friday the 8th of February 1481." The day originally written
was Thursday the 7th of February, but "Jovis" was scratched out and
"Veneris" written above, while another "i" was intercalated among
the i's of the viij of February.
