Maestro Bino went to work at once, and on the 15th of that same April had from the convent what seems the very large sum of ten florins and eight soldi for glue. But, after all, this Maestro Bernardino di Luca was not the author of the exquisite carvings which people go to Perugia to look at at the present day. A very "grave and manifest infirmity" did intervene to prevent the execution of the work, for on the 19th of the following August, Maestro Bino discharged his workmen on account of the plague, which had begun to devastate Perugia; and there is reason to think that the maestro himself perished by it, for after that last entry the name of Bernardino di Luca vanishes into the abyss of darkness, and is no more heard of, and shortly afterward we find the convent entering into a new bargain with another maestro for the execution of the work. This was Maestro Stefano de Antoniolo da Zambelli of Bergamo, who agreed with the monks in July, 1533, to execute the required works in the choir for the price of thirty golden crowns each stall. It will be observed that this price is about fifty per cent. higher than that for which Maestro Bino had contracted to do the work, which is an indication of the then rapidly-falling value of the precious metals. But this increased price was still insufficient, for on the 17th of July, 1534, the monks enter into an amended contract with Maestro Stefano, in which the terms of the original contract are rehearsed, and it is then declared that Maestro Stefano having shown and proved to the abbot's satisfaction that those terms could not stand, and that he should be greatly the loser by the bargain, and it being by no means the wish of the fathers that Maestro Stefano should be deprived of a fair reward for his work, but rather that he should make a suitable profit by the job, it was now agreed that the maestro should undertake to labor uninterruptedly and with all possible diligence, that the convent should find all materials and tools, and should maintain Maestro Stefano and his wife and a journeyman, and should pay sixty golden crowns a year as long as the work was in progress. Further, the convent undertakes to pay half a golden crown monthly to the wife of the said Maestro Stefano, "on the understanding that the said wife of the maestro shall serve and cook and wash clothes for all the family engaged on the work of the choir;" and further, half a golden crown monthly to the journeyman. Under this arrangement it was of course the interest of the convent that the work should be completed as quickly as possible. And we find, accordingly, the abbot commissioning Antonio of Florence to carve six of the backs of the stalls; Battista of Bologna and Ambrose, a Frenchman, to carve the reading-desk; and Fra Damiano of Bergamo, who was then at Bologna, to execute the four sculptures in bas-relief which adorn the door. This Fra Damiano, who signs himself on his work "Fr. Damianus de Bergamo,