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.
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:—
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—
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“1481 die Jovis Veneris 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.