THE SHRINE OF ST. SEBALD
“In the Church of Sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their
trust.”—LONGFELLOW.
THE Magdeburg monument, whilst it bears obvious traces of the influence
of his father Hermann, of the school of Wolgemut, and of Adam Krafft
upon the art of Peter Vischer, is an eloquent testimony also to the
rapid development which was taking place in the mind and ideas of this
eager craftsman. We have now reached the period when the ideals and the
lessons of the Renaissance begin to master his imagination and to
permeate his art to such a degree and with such success that the work
which was next commissioned from him proves to be the first and greatest
of Renaissance works in Germany. The shrine of St. Sebald reflects the
history of the artist’s mind. Upon a Gothic base and foundation the
spirit of Renaissance detail has overwhelmingly impressed itself. Before
we consider this work more closely it will be as well to state the
sources whence our Nuremberg craftsman drew his new inspirations. How
did he learn his lessons in Italian art?
In the first place it would seem probable that Jacopo de’ Barbari lived
for some time in Nuremberg during the last years of the fifteenth
century. It is at any rate certain that the influence exerted by his
drawings upon the Nuremberg artists was strong and lasting. Further, it
was only natural that Nuremberg, lying as it did on the direct trade
route from east to north, should be in close communication with Venice
and the great towns of Northern Italy. Venetians came to Nuremberg;
Nuremberg traders and artists, like Dürer, in their Wanderjahre, went to
Venice and returned laden with the fruits of their Italian studies, and
copies of the works of Italian masters. The Patrician youths of
Nuremberg, also, would naturally sojourn at the Italian Universities at
Padua, Bologna, and elsewhere, and they would bring home with them
Italian books and wood-cuts, examples of the copper-plates of Jacopo de’
Barbari and of the works of Andrea Sansovino.
But we seek for a more direct and personal source of contact to explain
the intimate enthusiasm for Italian art displayed by Peter Vischer. And
the secret of this source, which had remained hitherto undiscovered, has
recently been made public by the elaborate researches of Dr. Georg
Seeger.[3]
Footnote 3:
“Peter Vischer der Jüngere.” Leipzig, 1897.
Peter Vischer’s second son and namesake, he reminds us, is mentioned
pointedly by the chroniclers in one passage[4] as having done the
greater part of the work on the Sebaldusgrab, “for he excelled his
father and brother in art”; and in another[5] as having “taken his
pleasure in reading the Poets and Historians, whence he then, with the
aid of Pancratz Schwenter, extracted many beautiful poems and
illuminated them. He was in all things not less accomplished and skilful
than his aforesaid brother Hermann, and he too died in his prime.” Now
this young craftsman, it would appear, when the period of his
“wandering” was at hand, turned his feet, like his fellow-townsman Dürer
before him, towards Lombardy, “the Paradise of all arts.” His
imagination, doubtless, had already been fired by what he had seen of
the North Italian Renaissance in the treasures brought to Nuremberg by
merchants, travellers and artists. But the expenses of an Italian tour
were beyond the resources of the Vischer household. Fortune and his
father’s friends were kind to him; he was entrusted, probably through
the influence of Sebald Schreyer, the historian and patron of art, with
the task of “travelling” the famous _Schedel-Weltchronik_, which had
been published in 1492, with illustrations by Wolgemut and Pleydenwurff.
Booksellers’ accounts enable us to trace the journey of the young
craftsman. He passed through Como, where the façade of the cathedral, at
that time in course of construction, had many a lesson in the Early
Renaissance style to teach him, and he came to Milan, the metropolis of
Northern Italy. There he sold one hundred and ninety-one copies of the
book, and in the intervals of business he occupied himself with the
study of the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, from which, like many
another artist since, he learnt his first lessons in anatomy and
proportion. There also he may have acquired the art of medallion and
plaquette work, for it was about this time that he produced the first
medallion which comes from the hand of a German craftsman—the portrait
of his brother Hermann, dated 1507. From Milan he went south. He visited
the Certosa of Pavia, and he filled his sketch book with drawings from
the façade of that luxuriant example of the Early North Italian
Renaissance. He studied with especial care the figure of his patron
saint, and afterwards he reproduced it in the St. Peter of the
Sebaldusgrab. Thence he passed to Genoa, where he sold more books and
studied, perhaps, the marble Madonna of Andrea Sansovino. And so home,
in 1508, by way of Verona and Venice. Inspired by what he had seen, he
brought new life and inspiration to the workshop at Nuremberg. The
result of his journey was that he passed completely under the influence
of Italian art; he was filled with that untrammelled revelling in
existence and that unalloyed worship of the beautiful which is the
keynote of the Renaissance. He had learnt the value of the study of the
nude, and he had seen, as every artist must see, the superiority of the
Italian over the Bavarian model. Hereafter the tendency to discard the
short and sturdy types of the school of Krafft, and to substitute more
slender and more beautiful figures for the Apostles is marked. The
results of this Italian journey of his are clearly discernible not only
in the Sebaldusgrab, but also in his own particular works, in the two
medallions of his brother Hermann, executed in 1507 and 1511; and in
that of himself in 1509; in the beautiful plaquettes, “Orpheus and
Eurydice”; in the two inkstands and the ornamentation of the tomb of
Frederick the Wise in Wittenberg, with which we shall presently deal.
Footnote 4:
Kunz Rösner. MS. 933 b. Library, Nuremberg.
Footnote 5:
Neudörffer.
Remembering that picture of the father spending his holidays in drawing
with his friends Lindenast and Krafft, it is easy to imagine that the
old man, ever young, enthusiastic, humble and eager to learn, readily
appreciated and welcomed the revelations contained in the son’s sketch
books. He was already at work upon a Gothic shrine for St. Sebald’s
remains, but he soon modified his original plan, improving and enriching
it by the light of this new learning.
Ere the fires of that inspiration had yet begun to grow cold, and before
the Sebaldusgrab was more than half finished, another member of the
family took yet another journey. Hermann, the eldest son, had married
Ursula Mag in November of the year 1513. “When his wife left him in
death,” Neudörffer tells us, “he went for art’s sake and at his own cost
to Rome, and brought back with him much artistic material which he had
sketched there, and which greatly pleased his father and served as good
practice for his brothers.” Hermann himself died shortly after his
return, in the year 1516. He was run over by a sleigh in St.
Gilgen-strasse one night as he was returning to his home in the
Kornmarkt from the house of his friend Wolfgang Traut, the painter, and
thus “perished in his prime, in sad and piteous wise.” But that journey
of his had not been taken in vain. His drawings revealed to the old
burgher at home the further developments of art and some of the wonders
of the full Florentine-Roman Renaissance. The result can be traced in
some of the figures on the Sebaldusgrab, and, later, in that complete
acceptance of the revival of the antique which is expressed in the
Rathaus Railing.
The idea of a shrine to contain the relics of St. Sebald had long been
in contemplation, as is proved by the existence of Vischer’s early
model. But funds lacked, and it was not till a robbery was committed in
the Church in 1506, that a Society of Patricians and of the most
important men in the town was formed to consider and provide for the
carrying out of the long delayed plan. Men of wealth and learning, piety
and taste, like Sebald Schreyer, the devoted Sacristan of the church,
Anton Tucher, Peter Imhof and Lazarus Holzschuher formed a committee and
took an active part in subscribing and collecting money for the purpose.
A spirit of generous rivalry with those of the Saint Laurence quarter,
whose church, thanks to the piety of Hans Imhof, had been adorned by the
beautiful Pyx wrought by Adam Krafft, stimulated their zeal. They
subscribed and collected with such success that in the same year (1507)
the commission was given to Peter Vischer. Two thousand gulden was the
proposed cost, and twenty gulden were allowed the Meister for every
hundred-weight of completed work, “as in the case of the monuments in
the Cathedral at Bamberg.” A payment of 100 gulden was made to him on
June 5, 1507. His darling plan was, then, at last to be realized.
Vischer threw himself into his work with an enthusiasm only equalled by
his energy. For twelve years he with his five sons laboured, though
their labour was often interrupted by want of funds. Private
subscriptions failed to supply the cost even of the 157 cwt. of metal
used. At last, when, in 1519, Anton Tucher in moving words had told the
citizens that they ought to subscribe the 800 gulden still needed “for
the glory of God and His Holy Saint,” the money was forthcoming. The
monument was completed and the final payment for it made to Vischer
three years later. Elsewhere I have thus described it.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [ST. SEBALD’S CHURCH, NÜRNBERG
7. THE SHRINE OF ST. SEBALD]
“On the base of the shrine the Master inscribed in his favourite Gothic
characters the following legend:—‘Peter Vischer Bürger in Nürnberg
machet dieses Werk, mit seinen Söhnen, ward volbracht im Jahr, 1519. Ist
allein Gott dem allmächtigen zu lob und St. Sebald dem Himmelsfürsten zu
ehren, mit Hülf andächtiger Leut von dem Almosen bezahlt.’
“That is the keynote of this wonderful structure. Through years of
difficulty and distress the pious artist had toiled and struggled on
with the help of pious persons, paid by their voluntary contributions,
to complete a work “to the praise of God Almighty alone and the honour
of St. Sebald.” No word, one feels, can add to the simple dignity and
faith of that inscription. It supplies us with the motive of the work,
and it supplies us also with the true interpretation of the various
groups and figures which form the shrine. To the glory of God,—we are
shown how all the world, all nature and her products, all paganism with
its heroic deeds and natural virtues, the Old Dispensation with its
prophets and lawgivers, and the New, with its apostles and saints, pay
homage to the Infant Christ, the guardian genius bringing salvation,
who, enthroned on the summit of the central cupola, holds in his hands
the terrestrial globe. To the honour of St. Sebald,—the miniature Gothic
Chapel enshrines beneath its richly fretted canopy, fifteen feet high,
the oaken coffer encased in beaten plates of gold and silver in which
lie the bones of St. Sebald; and below this sarcophagus, which dates
from 1397, are admirable bas-reliefs representing scenes and miracles
from the life of the Saint.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [ST. SEBALD’S CHURCH, NÜRNBERG
8. ST. PETER]
“Around the substructure of the tomb rise eight slender piers, bearing
eight foliated arches, which, in turn, support three perforated cupolas
enriched with pillared and arched buttresses. In the centre of these
arches are placed richly ornamented candlesticks, with candles of
bronze, and these also serve as supports and run out into leafy chalices
on which graceful children play and swing. The bases of the eight
slender pillars are formed by all sorts of strange figures and creatures
suggestive of the world of pagan mythology, gods of the forest and of
the sea, nymphs of the water and the wood. Between them are some lions
couchant which recall to the memory Wolgemut’s Peringsdörffer
altarpiece. At the four corners are real candlesticks held by the most
graceful and seductive winged mermaids, with fish-tails and taloned
feet, about whom serpents twine. But the most famous and the most
beautiful figures are those of the twelve apostles, which stand, each
about two feet high, under delicate canopies, on shafts of the piers
already mentioned. Clad in graceful, flowing robes, their expression and
whole attitude eloquent both of vigour and of tranquil dignity, these
statues are wholly admirable. What sculpture or painting could convey to
a higher degree the sense of the intellectual and moral beauty and
strength which centred in these first followers of Christ? This
characteristic pervades them all, but the unity of suggestion is
conveyed through a variety of individualities and of pose. Each Apostle
stands forth distinct in the vigour of his own inspired personality.
(Ill. 8 and 9.)
“Above the apostles are set the Fathers of the Church, or it may be, the
twelve minor prophets. Beneath them, on the western end of the
substructure is a noble statue of St. Sebald, who holds in his hand a
model of the church called after his name, and at the corresponding
place on the other end that statue of Peter Vischer himself, to which we
have already referred. Here, in large Latin characters we find the
inscription ‘Ein Anfang durch mich’ (a beginning by me) ‘Peter Vischer,
1508,’ and under St. Sebald the record of the completion of the base:
‘Gemacht von Peter Vischer, 1509.’
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [ST. SEBALD’S CHURCH, NÜRNBERG
9. ST. SEBALD]
“On the base, at the foot of the four corner pillars, are the nude
figures of Nimrod with his bow and quiver, of Samson with the
slaughtered lion and the jawbone of an ass, Perseus with sword and
shield and in company of a mouse, Hercules with a club. Between these
heroes, in the centre of either side, are female figures emblematic of
the four cardinal virtues of mankind—Strength in a coat of mail with a
lion, Temperance with a bowl and globe. Wisdom with mirror and book, and
Justice with sword and scales. In all, besides the apostles and
prophets, there are seventy-two figures, in the presentation of which
amidst flowers and foliage the joyful, exuberant fancy of the artist and
his helpers has run riot. But there is, as I have suggested, a
well-conceived plan and unity throughout; an intimate correspondence, in
spite of the variety of groups, between the parts and the whole.
Everything is subordinated to the two central ideas which animate the
whole, and everything executed with a delicacy of feeling and a fineness
of finish little short of marvellous. The whole fabric rests upon twelve
large snails, with four dolphins at the corners.”
The bronze is, apparently, just as it left the mould. It has not been
filed and chiselled and smoothed and polished after the modern fashion,
and it has therefore lost nothing of the vigour and character of the
lines as they were originally shaped by the craftsmen’s hands. The very
roughnesses are commendable.
When Peter Vischer received the commission to produce this great
memorial of the municipal Saint the lines on which it should be wrought
were marked out for him by the traditions of his house and of his art.
The sarcophagus should be placed, according to his old design, upon a
base adorned with reliefs illustrating the miracles of the Saint;
figures of apostles should guard the coffin, and above it should rise a
canopy of lofty fretted Gothic pinnacles. Now this original design was
for a shrine intended to be over forty feet high, and something after
the manner of Adam Krafft’s Pyx. On this, or rather on some slight
modification of it, he began to work, and, as he went on, introduced
very important alterations under the influence of his sons’ new
knowledge. It is due to this process of modification probably that we
have to pass the criticism on the Sebaldusgrab that the parts are
greater than the whole, though the beauty and finish of the details are
so great that, once we are within range of their charm, we forget and
forgive any fault in the proportionment of the complete structure.
Beginning with the base, most likely at that end where the statue of
himself in his leather apron is to be seen, and where the inscription
“Beginning by me, 1508,” may be read, Vischer made such good progress
with the work that by 1512 Cocleus could write of it in his
_Cosmographia_ with amiable exaggeration;—“Quis vero solertior Petro
Fischer in celandis fundendisque metallis? Vidi ego totum sacellum ab eo
in aes fusum imaginibusque celatum, in quo multi sane mortales stare
missamque audire poterunt.” (What more skilful founder is there than
Peter Vischer? I myself have seen a whole chapel cast by him in bronze
and covered with statues, wherein indeed many people will be able to
stand and hear mass.) The chapel then and many of the figures were
completed or nearly completed by that date.
The alteration of the design to that of this single separate chapel
containing the sarcophagus was doubtless due to the journey of Peter
Vischer the younger and the examples of Italian tombs, which he had
observed, for instance, in the Certosa and in the Cathedral of Pavia. In
every part we notice how the Gothic skeleton has been modified or has
been clothed with all kinds of decoration in the Renaissance style. The
Gothic pillars, indeed, are retained, and the pilasters; but these are
richly ornamented. Cupolas, too, have taken the place of the fretted
Gothic pinnacles, but yet in the details of their construction, in their
flying buttresses and arched openings, the original Gothic design has
clearly been used and fused with the new Renaissance models, yielding
that architectural effect of mixed Romanesque and Gothic styles, of
which Cologne and Mainz afford, among many, the most obvious examples.
The figures of beasts and children found in the original are retained
but changed. They are executed in the full spirit of the Renaissance,
looking back to mythology. We have Cupids now and Genii, Tritons and
Sirens, and in place of the Gothic crab the Renaissance dolphin. The
ornamentation of the candlesticks is completely Italianate. The slender,
graceful columns which hold the candelabra are decorated now with a
continually varying luxuriance of ornament, recalling in form a hundred
details at Como, at Bergamo and at the Certosa of Pavia. In the case of
the mythological figures there is no caricature; there are none of the
monstrosities in which German art usually revelled when dealing with
such subjects. The artist has gone straight to Italy, to the source of
the new springs of knowledge and of the new-born delight in the gods of
old days. There is, too, an inexhaustible fecundity of pose. Scarce one
beast or child is the same. You might almost suppose that the artist had
aimed at giving us an encyclopædia of Nature, showing that all-embracing
enthusiasm which rendered so many of the great minds of the Renaissance
eager to excel in every department of knowledge. Each minutest figure
also displays a masterly grip of anatomy, proportion and perspective,
and here we clearly recognize the student of Leonardo da Vinci’s
drawings. The figures of the four heroes and of the lute-player are of
the school of Leonardo in pose, in modelling and in drapery, whilst the
Marsyas may be traced, as Seeger thinks, to a woodcut in a Venetian
edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1497).
The soft, transparent handling of the drapery is, generally speaking,
wholly un-German. For, until the epoch roughly marked for us by the
great _Adam and Eve_ of Albert Dürer, the study of the nude played but a
small part in the labours of the German artists, and they did not trust
themselves to use drapery as a means of revealing the form beneath.
Their study of anatomy had so far been concentrated upon heads and hands
and feet, and they treated drapery with exceeding care both as an aim
and object in itself, and, more than a little, as a useful screen for
defective bodies. But they were beginning to appreciate now the
endeavours of a Jacopo de’ Barbari to reveal the nude form through the
drapery of his figures. And to achieve this end Vischer, like Dürer, had
realised that a study of anatomy and the careful drawing of the contours
of the body are necessary. In some cases the drapery of the female
figures, as, for instance, of those in the relief which illustrates the
miracle of the “Icicles,” directly suggests the manner of Barbari, but
in the miracle of the “Healing of the Blind Man” the artist has modelled
his work on the antique. Thus he has taken the further step of the
Italians who, after struggling to reproduce the perfections of the human
body, and recognizing how far short of classic art they fell, had turned
to regenerate the antique, and so gave rise to the true Renaissance
which is the new birth of the old.
Between one pair of the four reliefs dealing with the miracles of St.
Sebald and the other there is so marked a difference in manner and style
that I do not think we can be far wrong if we attribute, with Seeger,
that of the “Icicles” and the “Healing of the Blind Man” to Peter
Vischer the younger, and the others, especially and certainly that of
the “Punishment of the Unbeliever” to his father. The particular point
which strikes one as most admirable, and which is in greater or less
degree common to all of them, is the simplicity of the grouping and the
avoidance of that sin of overcrowding which beset so many artists of the
day. (Ill. 10 and 11.)
The miracles of St. Sebald which were chosen as subjects for these
reliefs are, briefly, the following. St. Sebald was the son of a Danish
king who had renounced the things of this world in favour of the chaste
and solitary life of a hermit. He afterwards made his way to Rome and
was sent forth thence by Pope Gregory the Second to preach the Gospel in
Germany. On his way he abode for a while at Vicenza, and there one day
he received a visitor for whom he ordered his disciple Dionis to bring
the pitcher of wine. Dionis hesitated, for he had allowed himself to
partake of the wine the night before, and he feared detection. But when
the order was repeated he went to fetch the pitcher, and behold, he
found it filled again to the brim.
The fame of the hermit spread abroad. From far and near, even from Milan
and Pavia, people flocked to hear from his lips the wonderful works of
God. But amongst those who came, came also an unbeliever, who scoffed
and blasphemed at the prophet and his message. Then Sebald prayed to God
that a sign might be given to prove his doctrine true, and immediately,
in the sight of all, the earth opened and the scoffer sank up to his
neck. Then the hermit prayed with a loud voice and interceded for him,
so that he was delivered, and he and many of the unbelievers embraced
the true faith. (Ill. 10.)
Sebald now left Italy and came at last to Nuremberg. He settled there in
the forest in the heart of the Franconian people, teaching them the word
of God and working miracles. On one occasion we are told he sought
shelter in the hut of a poor and churlish waggoner. It was winter: the
snow lay on the ground and the wind howled over the frozen marshes of
the Pegnitz. But the signs of charity did not shine brightly in the
host. Sebald called upon the man’s wife to bring more wood for the fire
so that he might warm his body, for he was chilled to the bone. But
though he repeated his request the niggard host forbade his wife to
obey. At length the saint cried out to her to bring the cluster of
icicles which hung from the roof and to put them on the fire if she
could not or would not bring the faggots.
The woman, pitying him, obeyed, and, in answer to the prayer of Sebald,
a flame shot up from the ice as from a firebrand and the whole bundle
was quickly ablaze.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [RELIEF FROM THE SEBALDUSGRAB, ST. SEBALD’S
CHURCH, NÜRNBERG
10. ST. SEBALD PUNISHES AN UNBELIEVER]
When he saw this miracle the chilly host gave the hermit a warmer
welcome, and, to make amends for his former lack of hospitality, he
sallied forth to buy some fish in the market, contrary to the
regulations of the authorities. Being caught he was blinded, but the
holy hermit quickly restored to him the light of his eyes. (Ill. 11.)
So potent was the saint on whose shrine Peter Vischer was now at
work—that shrine to which, says Eobanus Hessus in his poem on Nuremberg,
no words can do justice and with which not even the greatest artists of
antiquity could have found fault;
“Musa nec ulla queat tanto satis esse labori
Nec verbis æquare opus immortale futurum;
Quod neque Praxiteles, nec Myron nec Polycletus,
Nemo Cares, nemo Scopas reprehendere posset.”
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [RELIEF FROM SEBALDUSGRAB, ST. SEBALD’S
CHURCH, NÜRNBERG
11. ST. SEBALD HEALING THE BLIND MAN]
Now in the style of the reliefs which record the miracles we have
related, there is a marked divergence. Even the figure of the saint is
not uniformly conceived. We may conclude that we have on the one hand in
the “Punishment of the Unbeliever” undoubtedly the work of Peter
Vischer, the father. The craftsman was still clearly under the influence
of Adam Krafft and his school. For the personages of the little drama
which he wished to depict are presented to us as simple Nurembergers of
every day, and they are portrayed in a spirit of very homely realism.
Similar in style is the treatment of the miracle of the “Wine in the
Bowl,” where, equally with the above, the handling of the drapery is
thoroughly in the manner of the old Founder. On the other hand, the
relief which represents the “Miracle of the Icicles” is probably by
Peter Vischer the younger. For the modelling of the female figures there
distinctly reminds us, in drapery and in pose of the head and body, of
the Eurydice in his “Orpheus and Eurydice,” of the Vita in his
inkstands, and of the flute-player in the Sebaldusgrab. And by him,
also, is the “Healing of the Blind Man,” which is by far the finest of
the four reliefs. There is a movement in the whole and a unity in the
composition quite admirable, whilst the cautious, tentative gait of the
suddenly blinded man, not yet accustomed to the eternal darkness which
has come upon him, is indicated with a delicacy and sureness of touch
which proclaim a truly great and original artist. In the treatment of
the drapery on the moving figures we read the result of his study of the
antique. It is used to indicate and to explain the movement that is
taking place. And very noticeable is the seizing of the dramatic moment,
which is a conspicuous characteristic of the artist of “Orpheus and
Eurydice.”
In the portrayal of the apostles on the Sebaldusgrab Vischer and his
sons have attained the perfect expression of the ideal after which the
father had vainly striven in the monument at Magdeburg.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [ST. SEBALD’S CHURCH, NÜRNBERG
12. ST. PAUL]
In every way the advance made by the artist since he wrought that early
masterpiece is noticeable. The apostles here, unlike those in the
original design, and unlike, also, those on the tomb of Archbishop
Ernst, are not standing gazing straight in front of them in holy,
unconscious calm, but a certain relation has been established between
some of the pairs. That relation has not been established indeed with
mathematical precision, but with an art that succeeds in producing the
effect of nature. Take, for instance, the figures of Paul and Philip,
which are represented in the act of earnest conversation, or those of
Thomas and James the Less, which suggest men who are busy with their own
thoughts, but are composed so as to be in complete harmony with those of
the neighbouring apostles. The figures are skilfully arranged also so as
to produce a harmonious contrast with the twelve patriarchs above them.
We noticed in the apostles of the Magdeburg monument a distinct lack of
variety in pose, especially of arms and hands. The figures there were
stiff and lacking in grace, but these are full of fire and movement. The
figures there were over short. They were the types of Adam Krafft and
the Nuremberg school. But these, in greater or less degree, are
Renaissance types of comparative litheness, and inspired with life and
intelligence.
In breaking away from the traditions of Veit Stoss and Adam Krafft the
artist has advanced to a notable extent beyond them, and even beyond
Dürer in most cases, in the quality of spirituality which he has learnt
to impress upon his work.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [ST. SEBALD’S CHURCH, Nürnberg
13. ST. BARTHOLOMEW]
A similar development is noticeable in the drapery. The apostles at
Magdeburg are clad in the heavy, wooden garments of the old school,
whilst those of the Sebaldusgrab are draped in fine folds which fall in
soft curves over bodies anatomically correct.
We cannot, perhaps, determine with certainty which of the Vischer family
is responsible for each figure. But where we find one recalling in pose
and drapery the motives of the Magdeburg tomb we may safely attribute it
to the father. He was fond of horizontal folds and much affected that
motive of a mantle which consists in its being thrown over and falling
from the right arm and resting on the left shoulder. His handling of
hair is also distinctive. He preferred to provide his statues with
masses of luxuriant hair and beard and moustaches. His noblest
achievement is the figure of the Apostle Andrew.
To Peter Vischer the younger we may attribute the representation of his
patron saint. This, as Dr. Seeger has pointed out, is based on a
recollection or a drawing of the figure of that Apostle on the façade of
the Certosa di Pavia, modified by the individuality of the present
artist and adapted to the exigencies of this shrine. It is an absolutely
different type from that on the Magdeburg tomb, which had more in common
with the St. Peter of old Hermann on the Font at Wittenberg. There the
head, to take one point, is larger and adorned with a heavy mass of
luxuriant curling hair and beard. But the head of this Apostle is small
and fine; the eyes deep set, the neck sinewy. The loose and admirable
fall of the drapery is in the new manner. And with that nervous grasp of
the key, that searching gaze, those wrinkled and contracted brows, the
youthful craftsman has nobly represented his patron Saint, Peter the
bald, intellectual Keeper of the Gates of Heaven.
Completely different again in type and treatment is the figure of the
Apostle Bartholomew. (Ill. 13.) It smacks of Rome, and Roman too is
Simon. These, we should naturally hazard, were the work of Hermann the
eldest son, after his return from his _Rom-reise_ in 1516. And in this
theory we are confirmed by a passage in a manuscript in the Nuremberg
Town Library, which tells us that “Hermann Vischer alone made the
Apostle Bartholomew and several tabernacles,” as, for instance, without
doubt that Roman triumphal arch above the statue of St. Paul.
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