PETER VISCHER 
later years is still more finely conceived and finely 
executed. The artist by this time, about the 
year 1520 let us say, had found his own soul and 
strength, and dared to be more himself. The 
Berlin plaquette, which passed from the Nagler 
collection to the Berlin Museum in 1835, is a 
great improvement upon the old theme. The 
composition is in all respects much more rhyth- 
mical and harmonious. Orpheus has been step- 
ping quickly forward, playing as only Orpheus 
with his lute could play, playing for life and love 
and happiness, when suddenly the irresistible fear 
has come upon him that she, his half-regained 
Eurydice, may not be following him. He has, 
ander the spur of that doubt, flung round his head 
quickly to reassure himself. And she, even in 
that instant, begins to turn again towards those 
shadowy regions whence his music and his faith, 
so far maintained, had drawn her. -Reproachful, 
sorrowing, in the agony of her love and her de- 
spair, she gazes at him with one long last look. 
Here the artist has turned the back-fluttering 
veil to a new and beautiful motive, and, like the 
arrangement of the hair and the treatment of the 
feet, it has been fittingly and carefully thought 
out to illustrate the two movements in which the 
tragedy of the moment lies. The style is essen- 
tially Italianate, and the device of the two spiked 
ash in the corner of the plaquette proclaim the 
authorship of it. Orpheus, it-will be noticed, 1s 
not provided with the lute of antiquity but with a 
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