PETER VISCHER
later years is still more finely conceived and finely
executed. The artist by this time, about the
year 1520 let us say, had found his own soul and
strength, and dared to be more himself. The
Berlin plaquette, which passed from the Nagler
collection to the Berlin Museum in 1835, is a
great improvement upon the old theme. The
composition is in all respects much more rhyth-
mical and harmonious. Orpheus has been step-
ping quickly forward, playing as only Orpheus
with his lute could play, playing for life and love
and happiness, when suddenly the irresistible fear
has come upon him that she, his half-regained
Eurydice, may not be following him. He has,
ander the spur of that doubt, flung round his head
quickly to reassure himself. And she, even in
that instant, begins to turn again towards those
shadowy regions whence his music and his faith,
so far maintained, had drawn her. -Reproachful,
sorrowing, in the agony of her love and her de-
spair, she gazes at him with one long last look.
Here the artist has turned the back-fluttering
veil to a new and beautiful motive, and, like the
arrangement of the hair and the treatment of the
feet, it has been fittingly and carefully thought
out to illustrate the two movements in which the
tragedy of the moment lies. The style is essen-
tially Italianate, and the device of the two spiked
ash in the corner of the plaquette proclaim the
authorship of it. Orpheus, it-will be noticed, 1s
not provided with the lute of antiquity but with a
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