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.’
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.