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 shapes and sizes for the preservation of the relics of saints, ornamental candlesticks, and such like.  In the richer and more important churches these objects are generally of the precious metals, and frequently richly adorned with gems, so that the amount of treasure stored in these repositories is often very considerable.  Sometimes such a range of wood-work as has been described will be found filling one side only of the sacristy, but in many cases it runs round the whole apartment.  And this piece of ecclesiastical furniture therefore presented a great field for the taste and ingenuity of the old maestri in wood-carving to exhibit their skill both in design and in execution.  At the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter, of the choir of which we have been speaking, this fitting up of the sacristy had been done previously; and it is accordingly much less rich in carving than the work in the choir.  But some of the doors of the cupboards are still more preciously ornamented by some very finely-painted heads from the hand of the great Perugino.

Such as it is, however, this sacristy at St. Peter’s was handsome enough to excite the emulation of the canons of the cathedral, for the contract made with Maestro Mariotto—­who was nicknamed Torzuolo—­specifies that the work is to be entirely of walnut wood, after the fashion of the sacristy at St. Peter’s, and is to be executed “in the manner of a good, loyal and expert master.”  It is to be all done by his own hand, or at least in his presence and under his superintendence.  The work is to be completed in one year, and the canons are to pay for it at the rate of ten florins every square braccio, Florentine measure.  This was in 1494; and it will here again be observed that the price, as compared with that to be paid to Maestro Stefano by the monks of St. Peter’s for their choir, even fully allowing for the greater richness of the latter, indicates the very rapid alteration in the value of money which took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century.  But the canons, it would seem, were very careful hands