The towers of St. Lawrence’s at Nüremberg are somewhat Romanesque; but the windows, door openings, buttresses, and pinnacles are in the Gothic style. The recessed porch has a square-headed double doorway, richly decorated (Fig. 391). The interior (Fig. 392) of this church is extremely artistic in its general effect. The stonework is of that dark brown colour that is seen in so many German churches; the rich colour of the stained glass, the pictures, and shields hung up round the piers and on the walls, with their rich tones of gold and colours, the graceful piers ending in the ribs and supporting the vaulting of the ceilings, the carved rood-cross and pulpit, and above all the great carved wood medallion of the Annunciation, by Veit Stoss (1518), make up the richest of pictures, which is a sample of what may be seen in many interiors of German churches.[churches.]
Fig. 392.—Interior of St. Lawrence, at Nüremberg.
Another interesting church in Nüremberg is that of St. Sebaldus, more from its association with the name and works of Adam Kraft, who carved the figure work on the exterior, and Peter Vischer, whose celebrated work is the chief glory of this church—the Shrine of St. Sebaldus (Fig. 393), one of the most important works of the fifteenth century—than from its merits as an architectural work. The plan of this church is bad in having its nave and aisles of equal width, which is at utter variance with all ideas of good proportion and of the Gothic style. The shrine of St. Sebaldus is modelled and cast in bronze; Peter Vischer and his five sons laboured on it for twelve years before it was completed. It is Gothic entirely in construction, but most of the forms and details of the ornament and figure work are purely Italian; for at this time—the beginning of the sixteenth century—Germanic artists were fascinated and strongly influenced by the art that flourished beyond the Alps. A fine cast of this monument is in the Kensington Museum. The “Bride’s Door” of St. Sebaldus (Fig. 394) has an interesting canopy of German tracery.
Fig. 393.—Shrine of St. Sebaldus, at Nüremberg.
Fig. 394.—The “Bride’s Door” of St. Sebaldus, at Nüremberg.
Art having gradually passed into the hands of the bourgeois element, the principal cities in Germany, especially those of the north, vied with each other in the erection of town halls and civic buildings (Fig. 395).
In the Netherlands, in Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, Louvain, Nüremberg, Augsberg, and Marienberg, many quaint edifices are still found of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, consisting often of brick glazed black and red, and wide-jointed, or of stone throughout. They have mostly steep roofs, battlemented cornices, and stepped gables.[gables.] They are decorated with little spires or pinnacles, and have horizontal or pointed openings to doorways and windows, richly decorated friezes and stringcourses, open arcades under the first story, picturesques balconies, and corner turrets ending in corbels, which were often richly carved.