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.
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