nd old candlesticks. And here was the whole
remaining stock of the work! I was at that time able, by the exercise of
much patience, trouble and persuasion with the old sacristan--who seemed
to consider the sale of the plates a very insufficient recompense for
the trouble of looking for them--to get together a complete copy of the
work; but when I was there the other day not more than twenty of the
plates out of nearly twice that number were to be found. In the mean
time, however, a complete set of photographs of every portion of the
sculpture has been made in a smaller size, but sufficiently large to
give a very satisfactory representation of the extreme beauty and
elegance of the work. It is indeed impossible to doubt that this Master
Stephen of Bergamo, the carpenter, whose wife was to have half a crown a
month for doing the washing and cooking for all the family living in the
rooms assigned to them in the monastery for a workshop and living-rooms,
was a man of education and culture, and in every sense of the word an
_artist_. The difference between his social position and that of any
artist of corresponding eminence in our day would seem to consist wholly
in that greater degree of personal and material luxury which
civilization and increased wealth have brought with them. The payment
which he was to receive for his year's work, besides having been
maintained, lodged and fed at the cost of the monastery during the time,
may, I take it, be considered equivalent to about twenty-two thousand
five hundred dollars.

In 1494, on the 5th of April, Maestro Mariotto di Paola, "called
Torzuolo," contracts with the canons of the cathedral to make a range of
cupboards in the sacristy. Such masses of wood-work, very frequently
richly carved and ornamented, are found in the sacristies of most of the
larger churches in Italy. They generally consist of a range of deep
drawers below, up to about the height of an ordinary table, and above
this a series of cupboards reaching to the ceiling of the apartment, so
much less deep than the drawers as to leave a large space of table on
the top of the latter. The drawers are used mainly for the keeping of
the sacred vestments; the table for the spreading out of such of these
as are about to be or have just been used; and the cupboards above for
the holding of all the treasures of the church--chalices for the altar,
monstrances for the exposition of the sacrament, reliquaries of all
sorts of sha