THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF VISCHER
THE Rathaus Railing was the last and greatest of the works produced by
the combined efforts of the Vischer family. It is vain to attempt to
apportion the share of father and sons in it. That each had his share in
it we may easily deduce from the history of it given above, and the
result was a very perfect whole, the most complete and beautiful
achievement of German craftsmen labouring under the overwhelming
influence of neo-paganism in art.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [MUSEUM, NÜRNBERG
26. BOY WITH BAGPIPES]
It would be tedious and unprofitable to enumerate here the manifold
works, great and small, which have been in times past attributed to the
old Master by uncritical generations of credulous collectors. Almost
every piece of sixteenth or seventeenth century bronze work in Germany
has been at one time or another called a masterpiece by Peter Vischer.
But one characteristic piece undoubtedly by him is the “Boy with
Bagpipes” (_Knabe mit Dudelsack_), now in the Germanic Museum at
Nuremberg. (III. 26.) It is a charming little work, completely in the
manner of the Nuremberg school and of the Master of the St. Maurice
preserved in the Krafft House in the same town. Dürer, it will be
remembered, dealt once in a popular little engraving with the same
subject of a bagpiper, treating it, however, in a very different manner.
When Peter Vischer died in 1529 he left the Foundry he had established
at Nuremberg to his son Paul. Paul, as we have seen, had already shown
signs of being anxious to leave his native town and to seek his fortune
elsewhere. The trade of the bronze-workers in Nuremberg was no longer a
flourishing industry. On succeeding to the foundry, therefore, Paul
quickly seized his opportunity. He sold his inheritance to his brother
Hans in the same year and left Nuremberg. He went to live in Mainz, and
acquired there the rights of a burgher.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [CATHEDRAL, SCHWERIN
27. TOMB-PLATE OF DUCHESS HELENE VON MECKLENBURG]
Hans remained to carry on his father’s business, and to complete a few
of his father’s inchoate commissions. He is known henceforth as Hans der
Giesser—Hans the Founder. He continued to use the trade mark of the
House, and on more than one occasion signed in his father’s name as the
lawful successor to the business. There is, for instance, a letter
extant which is nominally written by Peter Vischer, but in reality by
Hans in the deceased craftsman’s name, for it is dated January 25th,
1529, whereas Peter Vischer died on the sixth of that month. In that
letter Hans begs the Duke Heinrich von Mecklenburg to send for a
monument which had already been lying a whole year in the foundry, and
for which payment is demanded. This reference fixes the date of the
purely heraldic tomb-plate which commemorates the Duchess Helene von
Mecklenburg. (Ill. 27.)
An example of Hans’ use of the Vischer mark is to be found in the tomb
of Bishop Sigismund of Lindenau, in the Cathedral at Merseburg, whilst a
tablet with a high relief of a Madonna in the Parish Church at
Aschaffenburg bears an inscription to the effect that Johannes Vischer
of Nuremberg made it in 1530. The former of these two monuments consists
of a lifeless prelate kneeling before a weak and effeminate figure on
the cross. It dates from the year 1544, and is a work of no importance
except as an example of the extremely rapid deterioration exhibited by
German art after the days of Dürer and the great Vischers. Hans was not
an original artist of any talent, but merely a painstaking craftsman.
Where he had the taste and designs of his father and brother to guide
him he turned out some admirable work, as for example the second of the
above-named monuments. This tablet forms a pendant to the memorial of
Cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg. The Christ-Child holds an apple in
one hand and stretches out the other with a life-like gesture, looking
the while at the Mother who carries him on her left arm. The Madonna’s
head is oval in shape, not of the square German type, and her eyes are
admirably full of expression. The drapery is both simple and boldly
handled. But every beauty in this beautiful work, from the central
figure down to the small angels who are playing musical instruments in
the corners, and who take their part in the crowning of Mary, is the
direct outcome of imitation—imitation of Peter Vischer and the Italian
masters he had copied and loved.
Another piece which was certainly cast by Hans Vischer but for which he
was not, in all probability, altogether responsible, is the tomb-plate
of Bishop Lorenz of Bibra, in the Cathedral at Würzburg, for the Bishop
died as early as the year 1519. The hand of Vischer’s father, therefore,
may well be assumed to be traceable in this design. Ten years after the
Bishop’s death we find Hans, through the medium of the Nuremberg
Council, presenting a petition to the Bishop of Bamberg, in which the
executor of my Lord of Bibra is humbly requested to pay the twenty-two
gulden still owing to the craftsman.
The tomb of the Elector Johann Cicero of Brandenburg, which is in the
Cathedral at Berlin, is also signed by Hans Vischer, and it is dated
1530. (Johannes Vischer Noric. Facieb. 1530.) This tomb was a long time
in the making, and in the original conception of it Peter Vischer the
father was concerned. This we may gather from a letter to Prince Joachim
I., wherein he acknowledges the receipt of two hundred gulden on account
of the tomb which the said prince had discussed with him in his
workshop, and for which, Peter reminds his Highness, he had made two
designs on paper. He now requests the Prince to return to him one of
those designs in order that he may be able to complete the work to the
best advantage.
The rough sketch for this tomb or part of it is all that we should care
to attribute to Peter Vischer in this matter. He must have entrusted the
execution of the commission to one of his less gifted sons, who was
following without being able completely to master the developments which
were taking place in the style of the House. The tomb, by whatever hand,
has clearly been executed at two different periods and in two distinct
parts. In style the original portion, which is the lower, is stiff and
conventional, and the architectural framework is chiefly Gothic, with
here and there, as in the case of the medallion-heads, a touch of the
Renaissance. The later portion is the upper, and it reflects the change
which had in the meantime come over the artistic aims of the House of
Vischer; but it reflects them in a feeble and uncertain manner. The
mantle of the Renaissance appears to sit uneasily on shoulders cast in
the Gothic mould, and to betray the workman who has never got rid of the
hardness and stiffness of his early days. But he obeys none the less the
influence of the artists in the house, and after his father’s death
signs the monument Johann Vischer.
A much more successful instance of Hans Vischer’s work in the
Renaissance style would be the canopy over the tomb of St. Margaret in
the Parish Church of Aschaffenburg. The authorship of this canopy must
not, indeed, be attributed to that craftsman without reserve; but, if it
did come from the Nuremberg foundry at all, to Hans should be given the
credit of it. For it belongs to the year 1536.
[Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [RATHAUS COURT, NÜRNBERG
28. THE APOLLO FOUNTAIN]
A less doubtful example of his painstaking craftsmanship is to be found
in the Apollo, of which an illustration is given here. (Ill. 28.) It
stands now in the Court of the Rathaus at Nuremberg, and serves as a
fountain-piece. Hans has based the construction of his bronze upon an
engraving by Jacopo de’ Barbari. But he has not hesitated to introduce
several alterations from the original designs. Vischer’s Apollo has the
right hand, which is about to let the arrow fly from the string, more
energetically drawn back, and the elbow-joint is set further back. In
Barbari’s drawing Apollo is represented as stretching the bow and
looking down, although he is pointing the arrow upwards. It was a
distinct improvement when Hans made the Far-darter’s gaze to follow the
direction of the arrow’s flight. Amongst other minor alterations he has
represented the God, probably out of consideration for the material in
which he was working, with short hair in place of the locks streaming in
the wind found in Barbari’s design. The obvious fault of the piece—a
fault which proves entirely ruinous to its success as a work of art—is
that upon the slim, attenuated Italian figure, excessively coarse and
heavy hands and feet have been grafted. And the arms are grossly
exaggerated in length. The playing children and sporting dolphins on the
base of the fountain are but crude adaptations of the stock-in-trade
with which the labours of Peter and Hermann had supplied the paternal
foundry.
The tale of the works of Hans Vischer is told, and so far as we can
judge there is no reason to claim for him a higher position than that of
a craftsman who conscientiously transmitted into bronze the designs and
inspirations of others. The fall of the House of Vischer was, in fact,
very close at hand. It may be dated in its final realization soon after
the year 1549, for it was then that Hans Vischer determined to leave his
native town and to settle in Eichstädt. And this is the last we hear of
him in the Nuremberg records. The Council of Nuremberg, we are told, did
indeed endeavour, through the mediation of the Guild of Coppersmiths, to
induce, if not to compel, him to remain at home. But he persisted in his
determination to depart. He was ready even to pay the price of binding
himself not to practise his craft abroad. He was to accept no commission
for a bronze-work, such were the terms laid down, without the knowledge
and the consent of the Council, and if he then succeeded in obtaining
their sanction to undertake it, he was to execute the whole of the
casting, from beginning to end, at Nuremberg. His readiness to comply
with these conditions would seem to indicate that neither at home nor
abroad did he any longer have hopes of success in his craft. The bronze
industry, apparently, had gone from bad to worse: the fashion for bronze
tombs and memorials had passed, and commissions no longer poured in upon
the Vischer Foundry as they had done in the palmy days of Maximilian.
Germany was already in the bitter throes of that Catholic reaction from
which she was only destined to emerge after the terrible ordeal of the
Thirty Years’ War. Nuremberg herself was engaged in a bitter and
exhausting struggle with her hereditary enemies the Margraves of
Brandenburg. Wars must needs come, but artists are the first to suffer
from them. For peace and prosperity are necessary to provide citizens
with the means of enjoying that luxury which is art. And art is the
first luxury which men under the pressure of taxation are willing to
deny themselves.
It was then, probably, for these reasons, and perhaps from other
considerations of which we know nothing, that Hans Vischer decided to
leave the “quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art
and song” which was his birth-place. He accepted the terms which were
imposed upon him by the Council, and on which he obtained leave of
absence to live at Eichstädt and at other places, if he chose, for five
years. At the expiration of that term, however, it was stipulated that
he should return and dwell at his old home in Nuremberg. Whether he did
so return we are not informed. For with his departure in 1549 he
disappears for ever from our ken. Thus the members of the Vischer family
were scattered, and their works, under the stress of the wars and misery
which came upon the land, were forgotten or confused, and the name and
fame of their house sank once more into that obscurity whence Hermann
Vischer had begun to raise it just a century before.
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