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 For he appears to us in the few historical
documents in which he figures as the perfect type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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