30 JUNE 1894, Page 39

Livre de Souvenirs de Maso di Bartolommeo. Par Charles Yriarte.

(J. Rothschild, Paris.)—M. Yriarte has issued in a most sumptuous form, and with about fifty illustrations, the journal of a Florentine sculptor of the fifteenth century. Maso, known as Masaecio (not, of course, the painter of that name), was a some- what humble craftsman, but was associated in some of the most celebrated works of the time with the masters of his craft. In the poverty of documents bearing on the history and life of artists of the early Renaissance, anything of the kind becomes valuable, and M. Yriarte draws out the significance of this docu- ment in his introductory chapters. The journal itself is of the driest description, being an account-book with notes of the work done by its author ; but to the student of the time such meagre notes have a value by their bearing on other knowledge. The time covered is eight years from 1447, and we have in these pages the business journal of a sculptor employed at Florence in the times of the first Medici, at Urbino under Montefeltre, and at Rimini under Sigismund Malatesta.