peter vischer: his life

peter vischer, the great bronze-founder, whose work and that of his house embodies the complete transition from the gothic to the renaissance style in germany, was born and brought up in his father’s house in “am sand.” there he lived, and he worked as an apprentice with his father in the town foundry in the white tower all the days of his boyhood. so much we may assume, although we know nothing of his youth, and no one of all the men since dead would be more surprised than he to find himself the subject of a monograph, or would be more genuinely astonished to learn that his up-bringing is a source of interest to later generations. for he appears to us in the few historical documents in which he figures as the perfect type of the plain, unspoilt craftsman or master of a guild. a man was not an artist in those days, but a mere stonemason, or smith or painter. but, lacking the title, he did not necessarily lack the quality. the study of design was never more enthusiastic, the struggle after excellence never 10more sincere than in the days when dürer’s art was regarded as a mere parasite of other trades, when hans sachs was

“schuh—

—macher und poet dazu,”

and when peter vischer laboured in his leather apron at the foundry, or turned from the entertaining of emperors to spend his leisure hours in the endeavour to improve his draughtsmanship. i have said that we know nothing of the latter’s boyhood, but if in his case the child was father of the man, he must have been a diligent youth. johann neud?rffer (1497-1563), an artistic scribe and the man in whom succeeding ages have had to bless the inventor of german type, has left us a charming picture of him in later days. “this peter vischer was a man of amiable conversation,” he writes in his nachrichten über nürnberger künstler und werkleute, a work which is not indeed free from errors, but to which we owe the earliest accounts we have of most of the nuremberg artists, “and among natural arts (to speak as a layman) finely skilled in casting and so much renowned among the nobility that when any prince or great potentate came to the town he seldom omitted to pay him a visit in his foundry, for he went every day to his casting shop and worked there.”

adam krafft the sculptor, we learn from the same source, and sebastien lindenast the coppersmith, who made works of art of copper “as if 11they had been of gold or silver,” were his two bosom friends. they seemed, we are told, to have but one heart. all three were equally simple, disinterested, and ever eager to learn. “they were like brothers; every friday, even in their old age, they met and studied together like apprentices, as the designs which they executed at their meetings prove. then they separated in friendly wise, but without having eaten or drunk together.” the spirit of the reformation had breathed upon these men and inspired them with a new and burning zeal for art and knowledge and industry.

as a boy then, we may assume, peter vischer worked as an apprentice with his father. for in those days any youth destined for a certain trade had to be apprenticed to some master of that trade, who was responsible for his education both in mind and morals during his years of learning (lehrjahre). and almost everything made by hand, every manufactured article was the monopoly of some trade corporation. every trade, too, and almost every department of a trade, had its separate costume. each craft bore its special garb or mark of distinction. the masters and high officials of each were often notably bedizened, and garments distinguished the sabbath from the week day as clearly as they distinguished the merchant from the shopkeeper. the rules and regulations by which wages and prices, and the amount of work to be done and holiday kept, and 12the relations of the members of the guild were fixed, were strictly enforced, and could only be infringed at the risk of heavy penalties. the boundaries between the trades were clearly laid down and rigidly observed. for the middle ages were riddled with socialism, and this was a form of it. the guild system resulted in an arbitrary and irritating enforcement of the division of labour, which finds its counterpart nowadays in the observances of the trades unions and several of the learned professions. the man who made a window-frame was a window-frame maker and might not insert the window-pane unless he had also qualified as a glazier. only a locksmith was allowed to fix the casement to it, and it was a joiner’s business and a joiner’s only to embellish it with carving.

[st. sebald’s church, nürnberg

2. peter vischer the craftsman

the position of the bronze workers in this hierarchy of trades does not appear to have been in any way exceptional. the usual tendency of son to succeed father in the trade, to labour first as youth and apprentice and then as master and married man, to work on in his father’s shop and to live in his father’s house is carried out in the case of the vischer family. and thanks to this fact we can trace in the works of their house the development of native german art, passing from late gothic, slightly influenced by flemish realism, into the full flower of that german renaissance, which is not directly a “new birth” of the art of old days, but only the second-hand influence of 14that revival as reflected with a sudden and momentary brilliancy by the productions of german artists who had travelled in italy and studied with profit italian works.

on the expiration of his apprenticeship peter vischer would naturally, like other german youths, start on a period of travel—his wanderjahre.

whither he went we know not, but it is most probable that he turned his steps towards the netherlands, where he could study the marvels of the new style of flemish realism which had begun to exercise a potent influence upon the nuremberg painters of his day.

but whether he reached the netherlands or not of one thing we may be certain. neither now nor at any subsequent period did he go to italy.

it was indeed at one time thought and affirmed that he sojourned there once at least and perhaps twice. (sandrart, teutscher academie, 1675.) but there is not one jot or tittle of evidence to support this theory, which was intended to supply us with the source whence he drew the inspiration for the second and third periods of his art.

after his wanderjahre he returned to nuremberg, and living in his father’s house, in friendship with adam krafft, and in an atmosphere of late gothic tradition permeated by flemish realism, he entered upon the first period of his work, which ended, we may say, with the year 1507, and of which the magdeburg monument was the highest expression and achievement. vischer was by 15nature an idealist, and he quickly grew out of sympathy with the aims of the realistic school. but even in this tomb of archbishop ernst we can trace the influence exercised by michel wolgemut on the one hand, and of martin sch?n, through his copper-plates, on the other, as it is displayed in the striving after life and truth even at the expense of beauty, which is clearly noticeable in the figures, faces and heads of the apostles. the architecture and design, however, are cast in the late gothic mould.

the works that belong to the second period of the vischer foundry show a pure, plastic sense of form and rhythm emerging from the overwhelming dominion of late gothic extravagance. the childish things of that style have been put away by the mature artist, and, in obedience to the teaching of the drawings of jacopo de’ barbari, whom dürer called “a lovable, good painter,” and of the drawings of early renaissance work in north italy, which peter the younger had made in his wanderjahre there, the great masterpiece of the house, the sebaldusgrab, takes shape in a style that is a curious mixture of the medi?val and renaissance manners.

finally, when hermann vischer, peter’s eldest son, had made a journey to rome and returned thence laden with drawings, father and sons gave themselves up to a whole-hearted worship of the beauty of form and an eager copying of the antique which resulted in the most beautiful piece of pure 16renaissance work which ever issued from a german workshop—the rathaus railing, destined to be sold in the fulness of years and melted down for the value of its metal!

the life of peter vischer was simple and domestic, but very full of toil and trouble and private grief made bearable perhaps by his absorbing enthusiasm for his work. a few years before his father’s death, probably in 1485, he married margaretha, daughter of hans gross. a document, dated october 4th, 1490, gives us a slight glimpse of her character. therein her father records that he makes a present to his daughter of the green mantle and veil with which he had provided her on her wedding day, but at the same time he binds peter vischer with all the paraphernalia of judges, witnesses and solemn pledges not to allow her to sell or pawn the said articles. the date of this document led to the erroneous conclusion that the marriage only took place in 1489, but dr. seeger has recently pointed out that on a medallion by peter vischer the younger he expressly states that he was twenty-two years of age when he wrought it, and this in the year 1509. since neud?rffer, the nuremberg vasari, refers to hermann as “the famous peter vischer’s eldest son,” the marriage must have occurred somewhere about 1485. there was also a third son by this union, known afterwards as hans der giesser. margaretha died shortly after the birth of this last son, and in 1493 we find peter married again to dorothea von 17gericht. she died soon afterwards, leaving him a daughter, margaretha, and then he took to himself another margaretha. meantime he worked like his father at the town foundry in the white tower, and lived in the house he had inherited, “am sande.” but in 1505 he moved to a house behind the convent of st. catherine, which had fallen to him by inheritance. on july 26th of that year he was chosen “street captain” (gassenhauptman) of the barfüsser or franciscan quarter of the town, and in the following year he and margaretha signed a legal document declaring that they had bought another house for 120 fl. part of this house they pulled down and threw into a third adjoining one which they had also acquired. thus they formed a single large foundry of their own and enjoyed possession of their own dwelling house next door. this house still stands in the street now called peter vischerstrasse. two other sons came to him by this marriage, jakob and paul. then in 1522 he was again left a widower and a widower he remained the last seven years of his life, although historians, concluding that he had formed an ineradicable habit of matrimony, have placed a fourth wife to his credit. barbara they name her and say that she survived him. but as her name does not appear in the documents dealing with the partition of property immediately after his death it seems probable that they are thinking of barbara, the wife of peter vischer the younger. for he and his 18family were living in his father’s house, and seeing that hermann, the elder son, had died in 1516 and his wife, ursula mag, in 1514, it was natural that barbara, on the death of the old man’s third wife should take care of him and charge of his house. peter the younger died in 1528, but barbara and her six children would still live on beneath the paternal roof till the old bronze-worker died in 1529. the famous foundry was inherited by her brother-in-law paul, who sold it to his brother hans, and barbara, within a few months, found another husband in jorg schott, the goldsmith, and another home.[1]

1. seeger, “peter vischer der jüngere.”

thus it will be seen that the life of peter vischer, although it was over-full of domestic bereavements, was, on the whole and apart from his work, the ordinary happy home life of the german citizen. he fulfilled his duties and had his successes as a burgher. for he was one of the genannten of the great council both in 1516 and again in 1520. he was also appointed in 1506 to the committee which was to consider the restoration of that extraordinary old clock in the frauenkirche, known to young and old in nuremberg as the “m?nnleinlaufen,” the copper figures in which were cast by his friend sebastien lindenast.

for the rest he hardly ever left nuremberg, and never for long or to go far. it has been one 19of the difficulties of art criticism to explain how it came about, therefore, that this modest, stay-at-home burgher should have gone on all his life developing and adopting the new ideas and the recent revelations of italian art, discarding the traditions in which he had been brought up, and finally learning the latest lesson of the renaissance with such success that in his old age there came forth from his workshop the noblest work of german craftsmanship.