a,
perhaps the finest things extant in that special description of work,
but for carving the choirs I have mentioned are pre-eminent.

But there are a great number of beautiful works of this sort lurking in
places where the traveler, however eager a lover of art, would hardly
think of looking for them. The central districts of Italy are full of
such. There is in the mountains to the south of Perugia, overhanging
the valley of the Tiber, a little city, the very name of which will
probably be new to many even of those who have traveled much in Italy.
Still less likely is it that they have ever been at Todi, for that is
the name of the place I am alluding to. It lies high and bleak among the
Apennines, and possesses nothing to attract the wanderer save some
notable remains of mediaeval art which strikingly show how universal, how
ubiquitous, art and artists were in those halcyon days. Todi has,
moreover, the misfortune of being situated on no line of railway, and of
not being on the way to any of the great modern centres. It is,
therefore, completely out of the modern world, and nobody knows anything
about it save a few lovers of ancient art, who will not be beat in their
explorations by want of communications and bad hostelries. But the
little hill-city possesses two churches, whose choirs well deserve a
visit by the admirers of cinque-cento wood-work, I have mentioned it
here, however, mainly because one of these, the choir of the cathedral,
offers not so much in what may still be seen there, as in its records, a
very curious example of the spirit of anti-ecclesiastical freethinking
which was widely spread at that time through the artist-world, whose
best patron was the Church. I mentioned some months ago, in the pages of
this Magazine, some curious facts showing the real sentiments of the
great Perugino on this subject while he was painting Madonnas and
miracles for his ecclesiastical patrons. And the following singular
extract from the archives of the cathedral church of Todi may be added
to what was there written as a proof of the somewhat unexpected fact.
The wood-work of the choir was begun by Maestro Antonio Bencivieni of
Mercatello, in the duchy of Urbino, and was completed in 1530 by his son
Sebastian, who finished his work by inserting in it a singularly haughty
inscription in intarsia. The Latin of the original may be Englished
thus: "Begun by the art and genius of Ant^{o} Bencivieni of Mercatello.
This work wa