Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/201

 SCULPTURE AND PAINTING 189 weighing twenty-eight pounds and set with precious stones valued at two thousand ducats, and the statues of the Twelve Apostles, each weighing twenty-four pounds. We find, furthermore, that in the year 1462 the Abbot Conrad, of Tegernsee, bought two silver reliquaries and four monstrances, one of which, orna- mented with a representation of the Mother of God, cost five hundred and twenty-five florins. A figure of the Blessed Virgin surrounded by an aureole cost more than five hundred florins. There were silver statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, a pectoral cross of pure gold and precious stones, a large mitre, a chain and cross, many reliquaries, and eighteen chalices. Articles of this sort were also in the possession of pri- vate individuals. There is still to be seen in the Cathedral at Khur a silver-gilt monstrance, three feet high, made in 1490, the figures and ornamentation of which are marvels of art. It is surpassed in cost but not in beauty by the Osten- sorium of Master Lucas, citizen and councillor of Donau- worth in 1513, which represented in wonderful enamel work coats of arms, forty figures and inscriptions, and was presented to the monastery by Maximilian. Nuremberg attained quite as high a reputation for its bronzes as for its silver and gold work. As early as the year 1447 the poet Hans Eosenplut wrote thus of the workers in bronze : ' In Nuremberg I find many workers in brass who have no equals. Everything that flies or runs, swims or poises, man, angel, bird or brute, fish or worm, every creature of ornamental form, everything that is on earth, they can fashion out of bronze. Nothing comes amiss to their art. Their skill and works are seen in many lands. It is meet that they be