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.
23
|