Entering the church by the north-west door, near the Tugendbrunnen (see Ch. X.), we notice that the nave is twice as high and broad as the aisles which are thus subordinated to it. But, as in St. Sebald’s, the three aisles of the choir are of equal height. Here there are two stories of windows, instead of a single row of tall ones. Two visits should be paid to St. Lawrence’s in order to see the full effects of this church—one in the morning when the sun is shining through the windows of the polygonal east end, and one in the afternoon when the light streams through the glorious rose window in the west.
Plain, slender pillars carry the vaulting of the choir with its flat spidery network. A gallery which runs round the whole choir is reached by a staircase next the sacristy (s). The sacristy should be looked into both for the sake of its own beauty and for the sake of the choral books, illuminated by Jakob Elssner(?) (d. 1546), and a baptismal basin by Endterlein (d. 1633).[57]
The east end of the choir contains splendid windows (see p. [213]). The subject of the first, on the north side, behind the altar of St. John, is the wanderings of the children of Israel; of the second the Passion, of the third the Transfiguration, of the fourth the donor, Emperor Frederic III. and his consort, of the fifth, Saints and Fathers of the Church.
But far the finest and most famous of the windows is the sixth, the Volkamer window. It is a “Jesse” window, displaying the genealogical tree of Christ, and, below, the founder and his family. The seventh, or Schlüssfelder window, represents the holy mill and the four Evangelists with the four Apostles, after Durer, beneath. All these belong to the last half of the fifteenth century; but the eighth is a modern one (1881), commemorating the re-establishment of the German Empire. The Tucher window next the sacristy was painted by Springlin, 1451, and contains beautiful red glass in the early Renaissance style.
Another noticeable window is that on the south side, exhibiting the arms of the Schmidmayer family. The designs are attributed to Durer.
Near this stands one of the old carved chairs, in which the Masters of the Guilds once sat in turn to receive alms.
Of the chief treasures of the St. Lorenzkirche we have already dealt sufficiently with two—the Pix or Ciborium, the Weihbrodgehäuse or Sacramentshaüslein or whatever name we choose to give to Adam Krafft’s masterpiece[58]—