PETER VISCHER 
Coppersmiths, to induce, if not to compel, him to 
remain at home. But he persisted in his deter- 
mination to depart. He was ready even to pay 
the price of binding himself not to practise his 
craft abroad. He was to accept no commission 
for a bronze-work, such were the terms laid down, 
without the knowledge and the consent of the 
Council, and if he then succeeded in obtaining 
their sanction to undertake it, he was to execute 
the whole of the casting, from beginning to end, 
at Nuremberg. His readiness to comply with 
these conditions would seem to indicate that neither 
at home nor abroad did he any longer have hopes 
of success in his craft. The bronze industry, 
apparently, had gone from bad to worse: the 
fashion for bronze tombs and memorials had 
passed, and commissions no longer poured in upon 
the Vischer Foundry as they had done in the 
palmy days of Maximilian. Germany was already 
in the bitter throes of that Catholic reaction from 
which she was only destined to emerge after the 
terrible ordeal of the Thirty Years’ War. Nu- 
remberg herself was engaged in a bitter and ex- 
hausting struggle with her hereditary enemies the 
Margraves of Brandenburg. Wars must needs 
come, but artists are the first to suffer from them. 
For peace and prosperity are necessary to provide 
citizens with the means of enjoying that luxury 
which is art. And art is the first luxury which 
men under the pressure of taxation are willing to 
deny themselves. 
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