Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino Part 10

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 bra.s.s rubbing. It looks like: Lazarus Bouollins 1534 30 Augusti explenit 20 Amurs ...]

The Boelini were one of the princ.i.p.al 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. We could not determine whether some hitch arose so as to cause a change of day, or whether "Thursday" and "viij" were written by a mistake for "Friday" and "viiij," but we imagined both inscription and correction to have been contemporaneous with the event itself. It will be remembered that on the St. Christopher outside the church there is scratched it "1481. 8 Febraio" and nothing more. The mistake of the day, therefore, if it was a mistake, was made twice, and was corrected inside the church but not upon the fresco outside--perhaps because a ladder would have had to be fetched to reach it. Possibly the day had been originally fixed for Thursday the 8th, and a heavy snow-storm prevented people from coming till next day.

I could not find that any one in Mesocco, not even my excellent friend Signor a Marca, the curato himself, knew anything about either the inscriptions or the cause of their being written. No one was aware even of their existence; on borrowing, however, the history of the Valle Mesolcina by Signor Giovanni Antonio a Marca, {31} I found what I think will throw light upon the matter. The family of De Sax had held the valley of Mesocco for over four hundred years, and sold it in 1480 to John Jacob Triulci, who it seems tried to cheat him out of a large part of the purchase money later on; probably this John Jacob Triulci had the frescoes painted to conciliate the clergy and inaugurate his entry into possession.

Early in 1481 he made the inhabitants of the valley do fealty to him. I may say that as soon as he had entered upon possession, he began to oppress the people by demanding tolls on all produce that pa.s.sed the castle. This the people resisted. They were also hara.s.sed by Peter De Sax, who made incursions into the valley and seized property, being unable to get his money out of John Jacob Triulci.

Other reasons that make me think the frescoes were painted in 1480 are as follows. The spurs worn by the young men in the April and May frescoes (pp. 211, 212) are about the date 1460. Their facsimiles can be seen in the Tower of London with this date a.s.signed to them. The frescoes, therefore, can hardly have been painted before this time; but they were probably painted later, for in the St. Christopher there is a distinct hint at anatomy; enough to show that the study of anatomy introduced by Leonardo 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 pa.s.sed 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. Here are the signatures:-

[Again, some symbols]

Two of these signatures belong to members of the Triulci family, as appears by the trident, which translates the name. The T in each case is doubtless for "Triulci." Four years earlier still, Carlo a Marca had written his name, with that of his wife or fiancee, on the fresco of St. Christopher on the facciata of the church, for we found there -

1602 { Carlo a Marca.

{ Margherita dei Paglioni.

There is one other place where his name appears, or rather a part of it, for the inscription is half hidden by a gallery, erected probably in the last century.

The a Marca family still flourish in Mesocco. The curato is an a Marca, so is the postmaster. On the walls of a house near the convent there is an inscription to the effect that it was given by his fellow-townsmen to a member of the a Marca family, and the best work on the history of the valley is the work of Giovanni Antonio Marca from which I have already quoted.

Returning to the frescoes, we found that the men of Soazza and Mesocco did fealty again to John Jacob Triulci on the feast of St.

Bartholomew, the 24th day of August 1503; this I believe to have been the son of the original purchaser, but am not certain; if so, he is the Triulci who had Gaspare Boelini thrown down from the castle walls. The people seem by another inscription to have done fealty again upon the same day of the following year.

On the St. Christopher we found one date, 1530, scratched on the right ankle, and several of 1607, apparently done at one time. One date was scratched in the left-hand corner -

1498 . . .

il Conte di (Misocho?)

There are also other dates--1627, 1633, 1635, 1626; and right across the fresco there is written in red chalk, in a bold sixteenth or seventeenth century handwriting -

"Il parlar di li homini da bene deve valer piu che quello degli altri."

- "The word of a man of substance ought to carry more weight than that of other people;" and again -

"Non ha la fede ognun come tu chredi; Non chreder almen [quello?] che non vedi"

- "People are not so worthy of being believed as you think they are; do not believe anything that you do not see yourself."

Big with our discoveries, we returned towards our inn, Jones leaving me sketching by the roadside. Presently an elderly English gentleman of some importance, judging from his manner, came up to me and entered into conversation. Englishmen do not often visit Mesocco, and I was rather surprised. "Have you seen that horrid fresco of St. Christopher down at that church there?" said he, pointing towards it. I said I had. "It's very bad," said he decidedly; "it was painted in the year 1725." I had been through all that myself, and I was a little cross into the bargain, so I said, "No; the fresco is very good. It is of the fifteenth century, and the facciata was restored in 1720, not in 1725. The old fresco was preserved." The old gentleman looked a little scared. "Oh," said he, "I know nothing about art--but I will see you again at the hotel;" and left me at once. I never saw him again. Who he was, where he came from, how he departed, I do not know. He was the only Englishman I saw during my stay of some four weeks at Mesocco.

On the first day of my first visit to Mesocco in 1879, I had gone on to S. Bernardino, and just before getting there, looking down over the great stretches of pasture land above S. Giacomo, could see that there was a storm raging lower down in the valley about where Mesocco should be; I never saw such inky blackness in clouds before, and the conductor of the diligence said that he had seen nothing like it. Next morning we learnt that a water-spout had burst on the mountain above Anzone, a hamlet of Mesocco, and that the water had done a great deal of damage to the convent at Mesocco. Returning a few days later, I saw where the torrent had flowed by the mud upon the gra.s.s, but could not have believed such a stream of water (running with the velocity with which it must have run) to have been possible under any circ.u.mstances in that place unless I had actually seen its traces. It carried great rocks of several cubic yards as though they had been small stones, and among other mischief it had knocked down the garden wall of the convent of S. Rocco and covered the garden with debris. As I looked at it I remembered what Signor Bullo had told me at Faido about the inundations of 1868, "It was not the great rivers," he said, "which did the damage: it was the ruscelli" or small streams. So in revolutions it is not the heretofore great people, but small ones swollen under unusual circ.u.mstances who are most conspicuous and do most damage. Padre Bernardino, of the convent of S. Rocco, asked me to make him a sketch of the effect of the inundation, which I was delighted to do. It was not, however, exactly what he wanted, and, moreover, it got spoiled in the mounting, so I did another and he returned me the first with an inscription upon it which I reproduce below.

First came the words-

[Ricordo a Mesocco]

Then came my sketch; and then -

[In the book there is some handwriting at this point--unfortunately I cannot read it]

The English of which is as follows:- "View of the church, garden, and hospice of S. Rocco, after the visitation inflicted upon them by the sad torrent of Anzone, on the unhallowed evening of the 4th of August 1879." I regret that the "no" of Padre Bernardino's name, through being written in faint ink, was not reproduced in my facsimile. I doubt whether Padre Bernardino would have got the second sketch out of me, if I had not liked the inscription he had written on the first so much that I wanted to be possessed of it.