t receive
more than the price named--an agreement which is frequently found in the
contracts made about that period. When the work was completed it was
accordingly examined and appraised by Maestro Mattia of Reggio and
Maestro Pietro of Florence. The latter was brought from Citta di
Castello, a little city in the Apennines some twenty-five miles distant,
express for the purpose. We do not find any statement of their award.
But it would seem that Maestro Torzuolo did not keep to his contract in
one respect, but was as unpunctual as the carpenters of the present
generation, for the above experts were not called to appraise the work
till the year 1497.

Maestro Pietro of Florence was evidently a man at the head of his
profession, for at Citta di Castello, when he was summoned to Perugia to
appraise the work of Maestro Torzuolo, he was engaged in making for the
canons there a wooden ceiling for the nave of their church, which was,
by a contract dated 1499, to be ornamented with large roses similar to
the ornamentation of the ceiling of the council-hall in the Palazzo
Vecchio at Florence; giving us thus another indication of the degree of
general interest and attention which these works excited in those days.
The communication between city and city was difficult and comparatively
unfrequent, yet the fame of any fine work of the sort we are talking of
evidently not only reached far and wide among other cities, but
forthwith excited their rivalry and led to the production of other
_chefs-d'oeuvre_. Maestro Pietro was to receive for the ceiling of the
nave at Citta di Castello no less a sum than five hundred golden ducats,
equal to at least seventeen thousand five hundred dollars at the present
day. We find him also employed as architect to direct the construction
of a cupola of the church of Calcinaio. This carpenter was, then, an
architect also; and Professor Rossi remarks that it is by no means the
only case of the kind.

Maestro Mattia, the other expert called to appraise the work done by
Maestro Torzuolo for the canons of the cathedral of Perugia, was already
well and favorably known in that city, for he had been employed in 1495
to appraise some work which had been done for the choir of the monks of
St. Lorenzo; in that same year we find him executing some very elaborate
work for the convent of St. Augustine; and on the 20th of December there
was read at a meeting of the municipal council a petition from Maestro
Mattia