THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF VISCHER
THE Rathaus Railing was the last and greatest of the works produced by the combined efforts of the Vischer family. It is vain to attempt to apportion the share of father and sons in it. That each had his share in it we may easily deduce from the history of it given above, and the result was a very perfect whole, the most complete and beautiful achievement of German craftsmen labouring under the overwhelming influence of neo-paganism in art.
STEIN PHOTO.] [MUSEUM, NüRNBERG
26. BOY WITH BAGPIPES
It would be tedious and unprofitable to enumerate here the manifold works, great and small, which have been in times past attributed to the old Master by uncritical generations of credulous collectors. Almost every piece of sixteenth or seventeenth century bronze work in Germany has been at one time or another called a masterpiece by Peter Vischer. But one characteristic piece undoubtedly by him is the “Boy with Bagpipes” (Knabe mit Dudelsack), now in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg. (III. 26.) It is a charming little work, completely in the manner of the 120Nuremberg school and of the Master of the St. Maurice preserved in the Krafft House in the same town. Dürer, it will be remembered, dealt once in a popular little engraving with the same subject of a bagpiper, treating it, however, in a very different manner.
When Peter Vischer died in 1529 he left the Foundry he had established at Nuremberg to his son Paul. Paul, as we have seen, had already shown signs of being anxious to leave his native town and to seek his fortune elsewhere. The trade of the bronze-workers in Nuremberg was no longer a flourishing industry. On succeeding to the foundry, therefore, Paul quickly seized his opportunity. He sold his inheritance to his brother Hans in the same year and left Nuremberg. He went to live in Mainz, and acquired there the rights of a burgher.
STEIN PHOTO.] [CATHEDRAL, SCHWERIN
27. TOMB-PLATE OF DUCHESS HELENE VON MECKLENBURG
Hans remained to carry on his father’s business, and to complete a few of his father’s inchoate commissions. He is known henceforth as Hans der Giesser—Hans the Founder. He continued to 122use the trade mark of the House, and on more than one occasion signed in his father’s name as the lawful successor to the business. There is, for instance, a letter extant which is nominally written by Peter Vischer, but in reality by Hans in the deceased craftsman’s name, for it is dated January 25th, 1529, whereas Peter Vischer died on the sixth of that month. In that letter Hans begs the Duke Heinrich von Mecklenburg to send for a monument which had already been lying a whole year in the foundry, and for which payment is demanded. This reference fixes the date of the purely heraldic tomb-plate which commemorates the Duchess Helene von Mecklenburg. (Ill. 27.)
An example of Hans’ use of the Vischer mark is to be found in the tomb of Bishop Sigismund of Lindenau, in the Cathedral at Merseburg, whilst a tablet with a high relief of a Madonna in the Parish Church at Aschaffenburg bears an inscription to the effect that Johannes Vischer of Nuremberg made it in 1530. The former of these two monuments consists of a lifeless prelate kneeling before a weak and effeminate figure on the cross. It dates from the year 1544, and is a work of no importance except as an example of the extremely rapid deterioration exhibited by German art after the days of Dürer and the great Vischers. Hans was not an original artist of any talent, but merely a painstaking craftsman. Where he had the taste and designs of his father and brother to guide him he turned out some admirable work, as for example 123the second of the above-named monuments. This tablet forms a pendant to the memorial of Cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg. The Christ-Child holds an apple in one hand and stretches out the other with a life-like gesture, looking the while at the Mother who carries him on her left arm. The Madonna’s head is oval in shape, not of the square German type, and her eyes are admirably full of expression. The drapery is both simple and boldly handled. But every beauty in this beautiful work, from the central figure down to the small angels who are playing musical instruments in the corners, and who take their part in the crowning of Mary, is the direct outcome of imitation—imitation of Peter Vischer and the Italian masters he had copied and loved.
Another piece which was certainly cast by Hans Vischer but for which he was not, in all probability, altogether responsible, is the tomb-plate of Bishop Lorenz of Bibra, in the Cathedral at Würzburg, for the Bishop died as early as the year 1519. The hand of Vischer’s father, therefore, may well be assumed to be traceable in this design. Ten years after the Bishop’s death we find Hans, through the medium of the Nuremberg Council, presenting a petition to the Bishop of Bamberg, in which the executor of my Lord of Bibra is humbly requested to pay the twenty-two gulden still owing to the craftsman.
The tomb of the Elector Johann Cicero of 124Brandenburg, which is in the Cathedral at Berlin, is also signed by Hans Vischer, and it is dated 1530. (Johannes Vischer Noric. Facieb. 1530.) This tomb was a long time in the making, and in the original conception of it Peter Vischer the father was concerned. This we may gather from a letter to Prince Joachim I., wherein he acknowledges the receipt of two hundred gulden on account of the tomb which the said prince had discussed with him in his workshop, and for which, Peter reminds his Highness, he had made two designs on paper. He now requests the Prince to return to him one of those designs in order that he may be able to complete the work to the best advantage.
The rough sketch for this tomb or part of it is all that we should care to attribute to Peter Vischer in this matter. He must have entrusted the execution of the commissi............