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In 1549 Riccardo is arrested on charges of heresy, and imprisoned in Palazzo Ducale. Although the main aim of the operation is to shut down the heretic priest, Riccardogets set up but he manages to be exonerated through an abjuration, probably extorted by torture. He is then able to return to Conegliano with the task of public penance, to be exercised every Sunday in front of the village church.But the bishop and his vicar, two fanatics convinced that heretical people and organizations had to be broken through "the warning example of the fire",set again their eyes on Perucolo right in the summer of 1567, when anti-clerical and anti-Catholicbooklets circulate in large quantities.A relapse would cost Riccardo his life.A false accusation, a daring escape in Cadore, a capture and perhaps extreme torture send him to the stake, in the spring of 1568.
The dramatic graffiti of “cell X”are his own, probably just outlined in an attempt to exonerate himself from the charge; while the splendid paintings of the upper hall of Palazzo Sarcinelli in Conegliano leave a testimony of his high artistic standards, that make his tragic endeven more bitter.
Two doubts remain yet not completely solved, even after the book written by the Director of palazzo Ducale who has witnessed the discovery of the graffiti in “cell X”: why, despite his beliefs, Perucolo painted Christian subjects he hated that much, as saints and the trinity? And then, was his client close to his ideas, or he was such a great performer to completely be able to separate the craftsman from the real himself?
By Enrico De Iulis