Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/591

Rh GERMAN.] SCULPTURE 565 that mannerism which grew so strong in Germany during the 15th century. Of special beauty are the statuettes which adorn the "beautiful fountain," executed by Hein- rich der Balier (1385-1396), and richly decorated with gold and colour by the painter Rudolf. 1 A number of colossal figures were executed for Cologne cathedral between 1349 and 1361, but they are of no great merit. Augsburg pro- duced several sculptors of ability about this time; the museum possesses some very noble wooden statues of this school, large in scale and dignified in treatment. On the exterior of the choir of the church of Marienburg castle is a very remarkable colossal figure of the Virgin of about 1340-50. Like the Hildesheim choir screen, it is made of hard stucco and is decorated with glass mosaics. The equestrian bronze group of St George and the Dragon in the market-place at Prague is excellent in workmanship and full of vigour, though much wanting dignity of style. Another fine work in bronze of about the same date is the effigy of Archbishop Conrad (d. 1261) in Cologne cathedral, executed many years after his death. The portrait appears truthful and the whole figure is noble in style. The military effigies of this time in Germany as elsewhere were almost un- avoidably stiff and lifeless from the necessity of repre- senting them in plate ar- mour ; the ecclesiastical chasuble, in which priestly effigies nearly always ap- pear, is also a thoroughly unsculpturesque form of drapery, both from its awk- ward shape and its absence of folds. Fig. 13 shows a characteristic example of these sepulchral effigies in slight relief. It is interest- ing to compare this with a somewhat similarly treated Florentine effigy, executed in FIG. 13. Sepulchral effigy in low marble at the beginning of S^^^Sf f f S^t^T ,, i p ~ (d. 1349), m Frankfort cathedral, the next century, but of very superior grace and delicacy of treatment (see fig. 16 below). Leenth The 15th century was one of great activity and origin- tury. ality in the sculpture of Germany and produced many artists of very high ability. One speciality of the time was the production of an immense number of wooden altars and reredoses, painted and gilt in the most gorgeous way and covered with subject-reliefs and statues, the former often treated in a very pictorial style. 2 Wooden screens, stalls, tabernacles, and other church-fittings of the greatest elaboration and clever workmanship were largely produced in Germany at the same time, and on into the 16th century. 3 Jb'rg Syrlin, one of the most able of these sculptors in wood, executed the gorgeous choir-stalls in Ulm cathedral, richly decorated with statuettes and canopied work, be- tween 1469 and 1474; his son and namesake sculptured 1 See Baader, Beitrage zur Kunstgesch. Nurnhergs ; and Rettberg, Nilrnbergs Kunstleben, Stuttgart, 1854. 2 This class of large wooden retable was much imitated in Spain and Scandinavia. The metropolitan cathedral of Roskilde in Denmark possesses a very large and magnificent example covered with subject reliefs enriched with gold and colours. 3 See Waagen, Kunst und Kiinstler in Deutschl., Leipsic, 1843-45, the elaborate stalls in Blaubeuren church of 1493 and the great pulpit in Ulm cathedral. Veit Stoss of Nuremberg, though a man of bad character, was a most skilful sculptor in wood ; he carved the high altar, the tabernacle, and the stalls of the Frauenkirche at Cracow, between 1472 and 1495. One of his finest works is a large piece of wooden panelling, nearly 6 feet square, carved in 1495, with central reliefs of the Doom and the Heavenly Host, framed by minute reliefs of scenes from Bible history. It is now in the Nuremberg town-hall. Wohlgemuth (1434-1519), the master of A. Diirer, was not only a painter but also a clever wood-carver, as was also Diirer himself (1471-1528), who executed a tabernacle for the Host with an exquisitely carved relief of Christ in Majesty between the Virgin and St John, which still exists in the chapel of the monastery of Landau. Diirer also produced miniature reliefs cut in boxwood and hone-stone, of which the British Museum (print room) possesses one of the finest examples. Adam Krafft (c. 1455-1507) was another of this class of sculp- tors, but he worked also in stone ; he produced the great Schreyer monument (1492) for St Sebald's at Nuremberg, a very skilful though mannered piece of sculpture, with very realistic figures in the costume of the time, carved in a way more suited to wood than stone, and too pictorial in effect. He also made the great tabernacle for the Host, 80 feet high, covered with statuettes, in Ulm cathedral, and the very spirited " Stations of the Cross " on the road to the Nuremberg cemetery. The Vischer family of Nuremberg for three generations Vischer were among the ablest sculptors in bronze during the 1 5th family. and 16th centuries. Hermann Vischer the elder worked mostly between 1450 and 1505, following the earlier mediaeval traditions, but without the originality of his son. Among his existing works the chief are the bronze font at Wittenberg church (1457) and four episcopal effigies in relief, dated from 1475 to 1505, in Bamberg cathedral ; this church also contains a fine series of bronze sepulchral monuments of various dates throughout the 1 5th and 16th centuries. Hermann's son Peter Vischer was the chief artist of the family ; he was admitted a master in the sculptor's guild in 1489, and passed the greater part of his life at Nuremberg, where he died in 1529. In technique few bronze sculptors have ever equalled him ; but his designs are marred by an excess of mannered realism and a too exuberant fancy. His chief early work was the tomb of Archbishop Ernest in Magdeburg cathedral (1495), surrounded with fine statuettes of the apostles under semi-Gothic canopies ; it is purer in style than his later works, such as the magnificent shrine of St Sebald at Nuremberg, a tall canopied bronze structure, crowded with reliefs and statuettes in the most lavish way. The general form of the shrine is Gothic, 4 but the details are those of the 16th-century Italian Renaissance treated with much freedom and originality. Some of the statuettes of saints attached to the slender columns of the canopy are modelled with much grace and even dignity of form. A small portrait figure of Peter himself, introduced at one end of the base, is a marvel of clever realism : he has represented himself as a stout, bearded man, wearing a large leathern apron and holding some of the tools of his craft. In this work, executed from 1508 to 1519, Peter was assisted by his sons, as is recorded in an inscription on the base " Fetter Vischer, Purger zu Niirmberg, machet das Werck mit seinen Sunnen, und ward folbracht im Jar MDXIX ..." This gorgeous shrine is a remarkable example of the un- commercial spirit which animated the artists of that time, 4 This great work is really a canopied pedestal to support and en- close the shrine, not the shrine itself, which is a work of the 14th century, having the gabled form commonly used in the Middle Ages for metal reliquaries.