This the people resisted. They were also
harassed 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
assigned 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 passed 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.
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