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.
[4]. Kunz Rösner. MS. 933 b. Library, Nuremberg.
[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.
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.