“Musa nec ulla queat tanto satis esse labori
Nec verbis æquare opus immortale futurum;
Quod neque Praxiteles, nec Myron, nec Polycletus,
Nemo Cares, nemo Scopas reprehendere posset.”
The east end of St. Sebalduskirche faces the Rathaus: but the western is the oldest portion of it. Here the St. Peter’s or Löffelholz Chapel, as it was called later, after the Nuremberg family of that name, with its crypt and choir (Engelschörlein), and the lower part of the two towers[55] date from the beginning of the thirteenth century. They belong, in their original state, to the Romanesque style of architecture; whilst the nave affords a beautiful example of the transition to Gothic forms and the magnificent east choir is in the purest German Gothic. We may conjecture that the church was originally a basilica with a Romanesque east choir, flanked by two small adjoining aisles, corresponding to the west choir which is still preserved, and with a nave in the shape of a cross. Then, about 1309, they began to build broader and higher aisles in place of the low and narrow ones, and, in so doing, half concealed the old round-arched windows. But the most important alteration must have been when they pulled down the old east choir and began to build (1361) the Gothic choir, which together with the rest of the church has been recently and carefully restored. Twenty-two pillars 80 feet high support the vaulting. The two simple, slender towers at the west end, some 260 feet high, were apparently completed towards the end of the fifteenth century. According to tradition, the southernmost of these is built on piles—a tradition that reminds us of the swamps and marshes that once stood here, in the days when the narrow circumference of the first town wall did not cross if indeed it reached the river (see Ch. V.). In the base of each tower is a Romanesque doorway: over the southern one, in the tympanum, a high relief in stone represents the Trial of St. Helena. On the north side of the north tower is a low relief of the Crucifixion, a memorial to Burkhard Semler, 1463. Beneath the towers is the crypt in which was once the tomb of Konrad von Neumarkt, the founder of the Convent of St. Catherine. This, the oldest Nuremberg tomb, is now in the German Museum. The colossal bronze crucifix outside the west end, against the middle window of the St. Peter Chapel, was presented by the Starck family in 1482. It is attributed to H. Vischer, father of Peter Vischer, and has some merits as a work of art, though the figure is that of a Hercules rather than of a Christ. It was repaired in 1625, on which occasion the Nurembergers incurred the nickname of Herrgottschwärzer, or Blackeners of God. For, the story runs, the Cross was made of silver, and the Council ordered it to be coloured black in order to protect it from the roving bands of soldiers who passed through the town in the Thirty Years War.
On the north side of the church the beautiful Brautthüre (1380?) or Bride’s Door (see p. [154]) is especially worthy of attention. Very richly and daintily carved, the outer and inner arches form a porch which was meant to protect the bridal pair from the inclemency of the weather when they stood here for the first part of the marriage service. On either side of the pointed arch are the figures of the Madonna and Child and of St. Sebald with his pilgrim’s staff and a model of the Sebalduskirche in his hands. The ten intercolumniated statues on the inside walls of the porch represent the five wise and the five foolish virgins (at present being restored). Within the entrance appear Adam and Eve with a half-length Christ above them, and the snake and apple-tree of Eden.
On the buttresses of the east choir are some sculptures in half-relief, representing the Passion, and at the east end, facing the Rathaus, is the Schreyer Monument (Schreyer’s Begräbnuss), a high relief by Adam Krafft (1492). Nobly conceived and nobly executed, these representations of the Passion and Burial of Christ are among the most noteworthy of the master’s works. Especially beautiful in grouping and in feeling is the Grablegung—the Laying in the Grave. Sebald Schreyer, who died in 1520, was a keen patron of art and, as churchwarden of St. Sebald’s, devoted to the interests of his church. In recognition of his services, and as he was the last of his family, the rule which had lately come into force that all citizens except the clergy must be buried in St. John’s Churchyard, was set aside in his case, and he was buried in the east choir of the church to which he had devoted his life and fortune. For the Begräbnuss of Adam Krafft and Vischer’s Sebaldusgrab owed their existence chiefly to Schreyer’s care and encouragement.
The animals on the capitals of the door of the south aisle are full of characteristic humour. One may trace here some of that mockery of the monks in which the mediæval masons not infrequently indulged, and of which there is a famous example at Strasburg. St. Peter with his key and a crowned Saint with a sword are on either side of the door itself. A partly gilded Last Judgment occupies the space above the arch. It will be found interesting to compare the numerous figures of it with those on the main entrance of the Lorenzkirche, to which they are strikingly akin.