The boys generally go barefoot in summer,
and if ever a boy came near the door of the hotel this parrot would
go straight for his toes.
The most striking feature of Mesocco is the castle, which, as I
have said, occupies a rock in the middle of the valley, and is one
of the finest ruins in Switzerland. More interesting than the
castle, however, is the church of S. Cristoforo. Before I entered
it I was struck with the fresco on the facciata of the church,
which, though the facciata bears the date 1720, was painted in a
style so much earlier than that of 1720 that I at first imagined I
had found here another old master born out of due time; for the
fresco was in such a good state of preservation that it did not
look more than 150 years old, and it was hardly likely to have been
preserved when the facciata was renovated in 1720. When, however,
my friend Jones joined me, he blew that little romance away by
discovering a series of names with dates scrawled upon it from
"1481. viii. 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.
