THE TUCHER MONUMENT AND THE NUREMBERG MADONNA
THE absorbing interest and labour of the Sebaldusgrab did not by any
means exhaust the energies and enterprise of Vischer and his house. That
want of money, which has been the source of innumerable works of art,
combined with the artist’s restless striving after new forms of
self-expression, prompted the production of many another bronze during
this span of years.
We have seen that the heroic figures of Arthur and Theodoric were
completed in the year 1513, and to that year also belongs the original
design for the Rathaus Railing, the chequered and disastrous history of
which we shall describe later. Now it was proposed to found a monument
to perpetuate the memory of a famous Doctor of Law (“suæ ætatis
Jureconsultorum facile princeps,” says the inscription), one Henning
Goden, Provost of Wittenberg and Prebendary of Erfurt. Peter Vischer was
entrusted with its execution, and it was erected in 1521 at Erfurt and,
in duplicate, at Wittenberg. The subject chosen was that of the crowning
of Mary. The Madonna is represented kneeling on the clouds; her hands
are folded in prayer and her rich tresses float round a nobly beautiful
head and stream over her shoulders. She is in the act of being crowned
by God the Father and God the Son, who sit enthroned on either side of
the Virgin Mother. The Holy Dove hovers above her. Two characteristic
but excessively plump little angels playing musical instruments in
either corner fill up the spaces left by the curving scroll work above,
whilst at the feet of the Madonna the Prebendary kneels, supported by
his patron saint, St. John, whose hand is laid upon his shoulder. Clouds
and angels complete the foreground.
Of this tomb-plate Lübke writes:
“The simple beauty of the composition, the broad, free style of the
drapery, the noble loftiness in form and expression of the heads,
especially of God the Father, place this work in the ranks of the
noblest creations of German art at that date.”
The memorial certainly does bear unmistakable signs of Peter Vischer’s
handiwork, but it is impossible not to feel that in many points, as for
instance the articulation of the hands and feet, and the anatomy of the
body in the case of the figure of Christ, it is decidedly inferior to
the best work of the house of Vischer. Compare it with the beautiful
tomb-plate of Frau Margarete Tucher in the cathedral at Regensburg
(Ratisbon) and the difference in manner and technique at once leaps to
the eye. Yet this memorial also was made in 1521. (Ill. 16.) It can
hardly have been designed by the same hand, although this, like the
monument of the Eissen family in the Church of St. Ægidius at Nuremberg,
to which it is near akin, certainly came from the Vischer foundry, for
it bears the mark and signature
14P88.
Normberge. 1521. But the trade-mark between these two initials is
substantially the same as that found on the inkstand of 1525. We have no
choice, then, but to follow Bergau and Seeger and to attribute these two
former works, in great part at any rate, to Peter Vischer the younger.
And, indeed, they exhibit to a high degree all those qualities which are
most characteristic of his work. There is a rhythmic balance in the
composition which at once recalls the reliefs on the Sebaldusgrab
attributed to him. Here again the artist has seized a fine moment in the
dramatic incident he wishes to portray. He has harmonized and
subordinated all the characters of that pathetic scene when Christ met
the sisters of the dead Lazarus. The noble figure of the Christ who has
stepped forward to listen to and to grant the prayer of the bereaved
sister forms the centre of a picture whereof the disputing Apostles and
the sorrowing women are the necessary complement. With regard to the
Apostles themselves it only requires a moment’s comparison to
demonstrate that their figures are mere modifications of those on the
Sebaldusgrab, and they may have been wrought by any member of the
family, therefore, or even by an assistant. For the craftsmen of those
days were obliged to take a frankly business view of their handiwork.
Michel Wolgemut left much in each of his pictures to be done by his
pupils and assistants, and Dürer, too, following his master’s custom
was, in too many cases, forced to adopt the same practice. For a man
must live, and Dürer found that his careful and elaborate style of
painting was simply beggaring him. The commissions received by the
Vischer family were necessarily executed after something of the same
spirit. The design would be sketched out by the old man or one of his
sons, or, again, by him and his sons in part and in consultation. Then
whilst the more skilful of them wrought the more important figures and
details of the piece, the subsidiary details and characters would be
left to the ’prentice hands. In the case of the Tucher monument the task
of supplying the Apostle figures must have fallen to one of these, and
he would naturally base them upon the famous masterpieces of the House
in that line. But in the noble figure of the Christ, in the poise and
the moulding of the head, and in that spiritual searching gaze with
which the Saviour seems to be looking into the very heart of Lazarus’
sister and gauging her faith, we cannot fail to recognize the style of
the creator of the St. Peter and St. John of the Sebaldusgrab, and of
the author of the Orpheus of the Plaquettes. Equally true is this of the
modelling, pose and drapery of the female figures, to which particular
attention should be given.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [CATHEDRAL, RATISBON
16. MEETING OF CHRIST WITH THE SISTERS OF LAZARUS
(Tucher Monument)]
The background, too, is the work of a Master, and the gradual deepening
of the relief is worked out with a skill and confidence which argues
that it is the work of a Master who has made a considerable study of
perspective. The treatment of perspective and the very low relief are
indeed entirely in the manner of the early Florentine Renaissance. The
same influence is discernible in the style of the architecture in the
background. It is interesting to note the favourite device of a Perugino
or a Raphael reproduced in the cupola-crowned building which serves as a
finish to the picture. It was not for nothing that Hermann Vischer had
made his journey south some years before, and returned laden with those
sketches which “delighted his old father and provided practice for his
brothers.” The deviser of this temple and of those framing pillars with
their Corinthian capitals has learnt many a lesson recently from his
brother’s work.
In the monument of the Eissen family which is placed in the Church of
St. Ægidius at Nuremberg, and belongs to the year 1522, we have a work
which must be by the same hand as that which designed the Tucher
memorial. The similarity of the signature and of the style is convincing
testimony. The subject is the favourite Pietà, the lamentation over
Christ’s body after the descent from the Cross. Here we have the figures
of the faithful women, and of John the beloved disciple, and Joseph of
Arimathea mourning, whilst Nicodemus is reverently wrapping the corpse
in the cerements of the grave. Once more in composing his subject the
artist has seized the dramatic moment. The eyes of all these faithful
followers are fixed upon the dead body of their Lord. Their gestures and
their expressions betoken the intense grief of each, and each has his
place and share in the divine tragedy. The unity thus attained is
heightened by the dramatic contrast of the one person, the servant, who
stares at the body, unaffected save by vulgar curiosity, all unaware
that she is in the presence of the world’s most grievous and most
wonderful mystery. (Ill. 17.)
The figure and head of Joseph of Arimathea are nobly beautiful, and,
like the drapery, remind us of the St. Peter on the Sebaldusgrab. His
outstretched hands are eloquent of sorrow and, in common with those of
the women who kneel behind their Master, they speak to a study of
Italian art and of the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [ST. ÆGIDIUS CHURCH, NÜRNBERG
17. BEWEINUNG CHRISTI (Eissen Memorial)]
The Christ in this monument resembles in the treatment of the eyes, and
the hair and in the moulding of the head that of the Tucher memorial of
the previous year. The body is foreshortened, and the foreshortening
cannot be termed altogether successful. But successful to an
extraordinary degree is the spiritual, sympathetic expression of the
countenance, and indicative of a poet’s sympathy with sorrow, and his
power of showing it, is that down-hanging arm, masterly executed in
strong relief.
The young Peter Vischer had known much sorrow, and was acquainted with
grief beyond his years. The bereavements of his father, the loss of his
brother’s wife, and afterwards of his brother Hermann himself, must have
touched his poet’s heart and deepened his powers of sympathetic
imagination. The strong stirring of religious emotion which was at this
time abroad in the land would tend still further to chasten the
exuberant joyousness of his youthful spirit, and to bring him into touch
with the more serious aspects of life. Neudörffer has recorded for us
his love of the poetical side of life; his own Aquarelle on the
_Reformation_ proves the seriousness of his interest in the great
religious question of the day, and the evidence of the development of
his powers in his own undoubted works of art is potent to demonstrate
his enthusiasm for learning. Remembering these facts let us compare for
a moment with the sisters of Lazarus in the Tucher memorial, that superb
work of art in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg, which is known as the
“Praying Madonna.” (Ill. 18.)
[Illustration: [MUSEUM, NÜRNBERG
18. THE NUREMBERG MADONNA]
“No second glance is required to assure us that we have here not only
the _chef-d’œuvre_ of Nuremberg carving, but also one of the works of
art of all time. And yet the name of the master is unknown, and the very
date of the work is a matter of dispute. Clearly the beautiful female
figure of this sorrowing Mary, this praying Madonna as she is called
(_trauende, betende Maria_) once formed one of a group, and stood facing
St. John at the foot of the Cross, gazing upwards in that bitter grief
which is beyond the expression and abandonment of tears. Who can that
artist have been who could select that pose of the head, that poise of
the limbs, who could carve those robes, which, in purity and flow have
never been surpassed in German art, and who could express in the
suppliant hands such poignant emotion? _Man weiss nicht!_ And whose
touch was so delicate that with his chisel he could stamp on the
upturned face those mingled feelings of sorrow so supreme, yearning so
intense, love so human, hope so divine? For all this we can read there
still, even through the grey-green coat of paint which certainly had no
place in the original intentions of the artist. _Man weiss nicht!_ But
this much one may hazard—that it was some German artist, touched by the
spirit of the Italian Renaissance till he rose to heights of artistic
performance never elsewhere attained by him, and scarcely ever
approached by his fellows.”
So I have written elsewhere of this beautiful gem of German art. But is
it so certain that the author is unknown? The temptation to attribute it
to Peter Vischer the younger is extremely strong, especially when we
compare it with the figure of Lazarus’ sister.
It has, at different times and by various writers, been attributed to
almost every conceivable German craftsman—to Adam Krafft, of course, and
to Veit Stoss in turn, amongst others. But the work of none of these
artists approaches the style, the beauty, the refinement of this figure,
and is, in many essentials, distinctly opposed thereto. But if it is not
by these, can it be by Peter Vischer’s great son? The theory, it must be
confessed, is more probable than provable. We can only say that in his
greatest moment he might have done this thing, in making a model for a
projected bronze figure. For the creator of the King Arthur at Innsbruck
must be conceded to be potentially capable of any masterpiece in this
kind, and the Madonna is not beyond the limits of his power. The
slenderness of the figure is a point in favour of this authorship, and
not, as has been argued, in opposition to it, for there is noticeable in
the female figures of the young Peter Vischer, an increasing tendency to
discard the squat Bavarian type and to adopt the slenderer proportions
of the Italian model. Observe, further, that in the fall of the drapery
of the Madonna there is nothing of severity, nothing of distortion as in
other carvings of the same period by other hands. Rather do the sweep
and movement of it recall that of certain of the apostles of the
Sebaldusgrab and the arrangement of it as regards the feet is similar.
It may, in fact, be stated, without fear of contradiction, that the
serpentine sweep and the arrangement of the drapery, drawn tight over
the right leg and covering, as it does, the thrust out foot below, is a
motive practically confined in the German art of that period to the
works of the House of Vischer. It reminds us of the Apostles in St.
Sebald’s church: it is repeated emphatically in the fall of the drapery
of the sisters of Lazarus.
And surely the pose of the sister of Lazarus on the left hand and that
of the Madonna is substantially the same, although, in the case of the
latter, it has been refined and improved. That pose of the bent leg is
one of the most beautiful and eloquent of all the positions of the human
body.[6] But the similarity does not end there.
Footnote 6:
That it was a favourite one with the young Vischer may be seen by
comparing the female figures of the Inkstands, pp. 96, 97.
The right leg, the left arm and hand resting on the hip, the poise of
the head and the style of dress are all in the same manner. Nothing,
again, is more characteristic of an artist than his treatment of hands.
And with those expressive hands of the Madonna we may confidently
compare the hands of the woman who is behind the body of Christ or the
hands of Joseph in the Pietà of 1522, or the hands of St. John in the
Sebaldusgrab, or of the female figure on the inkstand of 1525.
Vischer-like also is the pure, refined expression and type of face,
which recalls on the one hand the yearning gaze of the aforesaid figure,
and the soulful look of Eurydice on the other.
But enough has been said. Peter Vischer the younger was, we think,
capable of producing such a work of art as the Madonna, and of no one
else whose work we know can we say as much. Yet such a masterpiece is
not thrown off by an unpractised hand. There is good reason, then, for
accepting the theory suggested by the remarks of Herr von Bezold[7] and
crediting our craftsman with the glory of this great work. In the next
chapter we shall deal with some minor, undisputed works of his, a
careful study of which will certainly, in our opinion, not tend to
invalidate the claim now advanced on his behalf.
Footnote 7:
“Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums.” No. 2. Nuremberg, 1896.
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