HERMANN VISCHER
that the Nuremberg artists lack the local note.
But they readily accepted the ideas of Flemish
realism and again of the Italian Renaissance, and
translated them into the terms of their own speech.
Albert Diirer, for instance, in spite of his wide
experience, always speaks in his art like his master
Wolgemut, in the Nuremberg dialect. The in-
tense patriotism and the deep religious feeling
which formed so intimate a part of the lives of
the citizens are reproduced in their art and litera-
ture, giving the greatest examples of them the
added charm of locality. The religious spirit in
which they worked lent a great humility to these
craftsmen. Sculpture and painting had indeed
been applied with splendid results to the adorn-
ment of domestic and public life, results so splen-
did that the traveller Aneas Sylvius was obliged
to confess that the mansions of the burgesses
seemed to have been built for princes, and that
the kings of Scotland would gladly be housed as
luxuriously as the ordinary citizen of Nuremberg.
But the chief work of men like Adam Krafft and
Peter Vischer was given to the beautifying of the
churches. And, working as they did in a deeply
religious spirit, it is noticeable that when they
represent themselves in paint, bronze, wood or
stone, they give themselves the humble pose of
suppliants, choosing always the lowliest place, and
often, like Krafft in the tabernacle in the Church
of St. Lorenz, or Vischer in the Sebaldusgrab in
the Church of St. Sebald, they appear in their
?