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A Lesson in How to Get to Hell


[image ALT: A damaged wall painting of a naked man holding a pair of oversized scissors in his right hand, while with his left he tries to fend off a snake which is biting his face. Over his head a placard with a caption in Gothic script. It is a detail of a fresco in the church of S. Francesco in Leonessa, Italy. The painting and the placard are explained in the text of this webpage.]

This man with the oversized scissors was a tailor. His customers would bring him cloth, and he'd make them a suit of clothes; but he'd cut off some of the cloth for himself — a habit of hardened sin which sent him straight to Hell with all the other cheats and murderers. Snakes coil round him and bite his face, he has no cloth even to wear on his own body, and always with him, a placard reminding him what he'd done all his life:

Lo sartore che ruba lo panno

— the tailor who steals cloth.

We hope he wasn't a real case, of course: but to the people who prayed in the oratory under the church of S. Francesco in Leonessa, where this fresco is painted, he must have been a good reminder that prayers aren't everything, or even the main thing in a Christian life.


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Page updated: 22 Jul 14