CHAPTER II 
PETER VISCHER : HIS LIFE 
Poa VISCHER, the great bronze- 
founder, whose work and that of his house 
embodies the complete transition from the Gothic 
to the Renaissance style in Germany, was born 
and brought up in his father’s house in “Am 
Sand.” There he lived, and he worked as an 
apprentice with his father in the Town Foundry 
in the White Tower all the days of his boyhood. 
So much we may assume, although we know 
nothing of his youth, and no one of all the men 
since dead would be more surprised than he to 
find himself the subject of a monograph, or would 
be more genuinely astonished to learn that his 
up-bringing is a source of interest to later gener- 
ations. For he appears to us in the few historical 
documents in which he figures as the perfect type 
of the plain, unspoilt craftsman or Master of a 
Guild. A man was not an artist in those days, 
but a mere stonemason, or smith or painter. But, 
lacking the title, he did not necessarily lack the 
quality. The study of design was never more 
enthusiastic, the struggle after excellence never 
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