the importance of the works of the vischers

the position of the vischers in the hierarchy of the artists not very difficult to appreciate, and it has perhaps been sufficiently indicated in the course of our enumeration of their works. they—for in forming an estimate of their work, we need not, nor cannot, separate father and sons—were great craftsmen, interpreting the teachings of other and greater artists of other lands, but yet assuredly not without an individuality and original power of their own. the view once advanced by heideloff cannot be for a moment entertained, the view, that is, that they were mere workers in bronze who reproduced in that material the ideas and drawings of others. the evidence of our eyes, which enable us to trace the development of their style, would be enough to refute that opinion, even if we were without the documentary evidence which shows that father and sons alike were patient and painstaking draughtsmen as well as craftsmen all their lives.

in the history of german art, then, their work represents, as we have remarked above, the transition from gothic to the renaissance style. it 131is eloquent to us of the passing from the conventions and the extravagances of late gothic to a complete acceptance and delight in neo-paganism. and it was natural that, in the spirit of intense enthusiasm for italian art which was upon them, these german craftsmen should reproduce what they had learnt from a jacopo de’ barbari, a sansovino or a donatello. they did, indeed, plagiarize when they wished with a splendid readiness and a fervour unashamed. they copied in a spirit of sincerest flattery an angel making music, or a symbol of an evangelist from donatello; an apostle or a dolphin from an italian building; a pose, a hand or the fold of a mantle from leonardo da vinci. the list could be expanded. but it would not prove that the vischers were mere servile copyists. they could do more than imitate. they could apply the lessons they had learnt from their careful study of the italian masters, and apply them with successful originality. it is in the energy which lives in the king arthur, in the simple yet vigorous composition and execution of bas-reliefs, such as the healing of the blind man on st. sebald’s tomb, or the tucher memorial, with their wholly admirable treatment of lines and planes; it is in the tender and spiritual feeling infused into the greatest of their bronze portraits that the unanswerable vindication lies of an imitation proved not too slavish and of a study that has not deadened but inspired.

it may indeed be the case that the lessons which 132they thus taught were sterilizing: that the very enthusiasm for italian art which they showed and generated was destined to destroy the flower of native german art. certain it is that the vischers founded no school and that individuality in german art was, from this time forth, blighted and crushed. but there are a dozen other causes to which this same decay of the native art may with as much probability be attributed. it is quite as likely to be due to the material facts of german domestic history as to the exotic influence of a foreign nation. but for us it remains only to take the work of these craftsmen as they gave it to the world, and to apportion to them the praise they have deserved. they aimed, with the most elaborate care and anxious perseverance, at perfection of detail, and this perfection they did frequently attain without prejudice to the proportionment and simplicity of the whole. the artist who pays great attention to the minute is too often afflicted with a kind of ?sthetic myopia which prevents him from perceiving the defects of his complete design. his work becomes too curious or else florid and ineffective. this is the besetting sin of teutonic art, and it is a danger to which metal-workers of all times and in all countries are especially liable. the vischers in their best work succeeded in avoiding it, for there we find a repose, a dignity, a simplicity and a spirituality which raises it to the level of the very best ever executed.