After Giovanni I can find no mention of a _capo maestro_ till February 16, 1435, when Jacopo della Quercia, otherwise "Magister Jacobus, Magistri Petri," was elected _operajo_ (president of the Council), _i.e._ Grand Master. His salary was fixed at one hundred gold florins as long as he lived, and his wife was to have a pension at his death. There were several conditions specified to which he had to agree. But he had so many other engagements, at S. Petronio in Bologna, at Parma, and Lucca, that he absented himself too much from Siena to please the _Opera_ there. As early as March 1434-35, a month after his election, we find him leaving two of the Council of Administration to rule in his absence. The absence must have been a lengthy one, for on October 22, 1435, the Signoria of the Commune write to him as follows--"Magister Jacobo Pieri electus Operaio, etc. etc.... As you have been fully informed, you ought before the past month to have taken action, and performed the duties undertaken by you in regard to the office of _Operaio_ of our Church, to which our Councils elected you. We and our councillors have waited all the past month, expecting that, for the honour of the Commune, and its needs at the hands of the said _Opera_, you would return. Now we are at October 22, and you do not appear to think of it. God knows how the citizens are complaining and murmuring against you. Therefore we have decided to write to you, that without fail, and with no delay, you must immediately present yourself to perform your duties, and let nothing hinder you. If you do not do this, it will cause us great astonishment and inconvenience."[227] The Council of the _Opera_ wrote a long Latin letter at the same time, exhorting their chief to return and satisfy the claims of the Commune. Whether he came or not I cannot say, but it appears not for any length of time, as on March 26, 1436, we find him at Parma, writing a defiant kind of letter to the _Operai_ of San Petronio at Bologna, who had appealed to him to finish his engagements there. By 1439 we find Jacopo della Quercia had died, and his brother Priam was writing repeated petitions to the _Opera_ at Siena about his inheritance from Jacopo, which it seems a certain pupil of Jacopo's called Cino Bartoli was withholding from him. So the work went on for centuries. There are contracts with different Masters for sculptures, for windows, for towers, for chapels, each Master designing the part assigned to him. Francesco del Tonghio obtained great fame for his carvings of the stalls in the choir in 1377, where his son Giacomo assisted him. We find him in Florence some time later, and his fame must have preceded him, for he is known there as "Francesco of the Choir" (Francesco del Coro). It is impossible to name a single architect for any of these great buildings; they were all the united work of a self-governed guild.