Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/194

 182 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE and strong faith and loyalty to the Church were the motives which influenced his whole life, and the main- springs of his patronage of art. He kept painters and glass-workers, sculptors and founders, goldsmiths and makers of church raiment at work executing his orders and embodying his piety in lasting forms of art ; and for many of the costly vestures which he ordered for the town churches or for outlying churches and monasteries he himself gave minute directions as to the material and design. For instance, a high mass vestment for the Dominican monastery in Frankfort was to be ' of red velvet of the most beautiful kind, fashioned in the richest and most costly manner, adorned with a handsome cross, and figures of John and Mary. His own and his wife's armorial bearings were also to be inserted. He ordered, moreover, two Gospel garments and a cope with St. James and St. Catherine embroidered on them, for which his wife's pearls were to be used, and on which, besides the pearls, eighty, or if necessary one hundred, florins were to be spent, in order that ' it might be worthy of being dedicated to the honour of God.' While still living he had a bronze statue, representing Death, made for his tomb in the Dominican cloister. 1 In the Church of Our Lady he had placed a sculptural representation of Christ and His sleeping disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, for the preservation of which he left an endowment. These things, however, were of small artistic value compared with the altar- piece which he had executed by Albert Diirer in 1509 for the Dominican church, and the ' Calvary,' by an un- known sculptor, which he presented to the cathedral in the same year. The altar-piece, representing the As- 1 It was afterwards melted and sold to Jews.