Saint of the day - St Crispolto

From the 'Aphrodite Room' in the Museo dei Bettona.

Yesterday morning, I went to the Museo dei Bettona.

There were a couple of photos of the objects that were in that Etruscan tomb that I wrote about previously. The actual objects must be in Perugia. Among those objects, there were

some lovely rings and earrings.

This was one of my favorite things in the museo's acheology section.

I love little amphoras, and I made a drawing of this in my sketchbook.

In the painting section, I found this lovely fresco

of the Madonna and Child.

There were three Periginos in this small museo.

This one is of St Francesco.

Here the Madonna shielding two Saints

under her large mantle.

And here, another madonna with child
and some Saints at her feet.

Below, a detail of one of the Saints,

don't know his name, let's just say that he sseems

to have suffered a little. That IS a saw blade in his head, right?

And so seems to go the bloodly history of Christianity.

And then ___ I came across the story of our

'Saint of the Day':
St Crispolto

Again, I found info on him in several places, but he is so 'early' that there isn't too much written about him. He is first century, and was such a do-goer, performing miracles in Bettona, that the Romans decided they needed to make an example of him.

The long painting was divided into five parts.

I had no idea who Crispolto was at the time, but later read that he is the Parton Saint of Bettona. This first part shows him helping someone.

Next, is one of two paintings of the Saint that seperated

the three story panels.

Below are the Roman soliders arresting the Saint.

Then, the second of the two portraits of the Saint

that separate the story panels.

Certainly not least, but it is the last of the story. I was amazed by this one, as I've never seen anything like this before. It's definitely a different twist on the torture of a Saint. Evidently, the Romans tried to kill Crispolto twice, but he didn't die. So, they tortured him to death.

Below is Dono Doni's depiction of that torture.

Of course Doni is painting in the 1500's, but still, did he make this up, or was this something that was actually going on, or was there more documentation of

how Crispolto died?

Burning questions, and I have no answers.

Let this be a lesson to us all, don't just oooh and ahhh over the large paintings (as lovely as the 'Adorazioni dei pastori' was) we can't forget to find the interesting stuff that is in the small paintings at the bottom.

I went from torture straight to lunch at the pastry shop.

Espresso with what sort of looked like little chocolate-filled croissants.

The inside had chocolate, and more pastry like, but the top had some really crunchy stuff and the combo was wonderful. I took the second one of these to Susie at the fabricca.

But I had a figue gelati first.