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.
CHAPTER X
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WORKS OF THE VISCHERS
THE position of the Vischers in the hierarchy of the artists not very difficult to appreciate, and it has perhaps been sufficiently indicated in the course of our enumeration of their works. They—for in forming an estimate of their work, we need not, nor cannot, separate father and sons—were great craftsmen, interpreting the teachings of other and greater artists of other lands, but yet assuredly not without an individuality and original power of their own. The view once advanced by Heideloff cannot be for a moment entertained, the view, that is, that they were mere workers in bronze who reproduced in that material the ideas and drawings of others. The evidence of our eyes, which enable us to trace the development of their style, would be enough to refute that opinion, even if we were without the documentary evidence which shows that father and sons alike were patient and painstaking draughtsmen as well as craftsmen all their lives.
In the history of German art, then, their work represents, as we have remarked above, the transition from Gothic to the Renaissance style. It is eloquent to us of the passing from the conventions and the extravagances of late Gothic to a complete acceptance and delight in neo-paganism. And it was natural that, in the spirit of intense enthusiasm for Italian art which was upon them, these German craftsmen should reproduce what they had learnt from a Jacopo de’ Barbari, a Sansovino or a Donatello. They did, indeed, plagiarize when they wished with a splendid readiness and a fervour unashamed. They copied in a spirit of sincerest flattery an angel making music, or a symbol of an Evangelist from Donatello; an Apostle or a dolphin from an Italian building; a pose, a hand or the fold of a mantle from Leonardo da Vinci. The list could be expanded. But it would not prove that the Vischers were mere servile copyists. They could do more than imitate. They could apply the lessons they had learnt from their careful study of the Italian Masters, and apply them with successful originality. It is in the energy which lives in the King Arthur, in the simple yet vigorous composition and execution of bas-reliefs, such as the Healing of the blind man on St. Sebald’s tomb, or the Tucher Memorial, with their wholly admirable treatment of lines and planes; it is in the tender and spiritual feeling infused into the greatest of their bronze portraits that the unanswerable vindication lies of an imitation proved not too slavish and of a study that has not deadened but inspired.
It may indeed be the case that the lessons which they thus taught were sterilizing: that the very enthusiasm for Italian art which they showed and generated was destined to destroy the flower of native German art. Certain it is that the Vischers founded no school and that individuality in German art was, from this time forth, blighted and crushed. But there are a dozen other causes to which this same decay of the native art may with as much probability be attributed. It is quite as likely to be due to the material facts of German domestic history as to the exotic influence of a foreign nation. But for us it remains only to take the work of these craftsmen as they gave it to the world, and to apportion to them the praise they have deserved. They aimed, with the most elaborate care and anxious perseverance, at perfection of detail, and this perfection they did frequently attain without prejudice to the proportionment and simplicity of the whole. The artist who pays great attention to the minute is too often afflicted with a kind of æsthetic myopia which prevents him from perceiving the defects of his complete design. His work becomes too curious or else florid and ineffective. This is the besetting sin of Teutonic art, and it is a danger to which metal-workers of all times and in all countries are especially liable. The Vischers in their best work succeeded in avoiding it, for there we find a repose, a dignity, a simplicity and a spirituality which raises it to the level of the very best ever executed.