PETER VISCHER 
there is discernible here the slight hesitation and 
misgiving of one who fears that he is attempting 
what is beyond his strength. 
Certainly we get no such impression when we 
turn to the splendid strenuous figure of Arthur. 
This zs the Arthur whom we know, in all the 
splendour of his manhood, bold and free, the noblest 
flower of chivalry; Arthur, the very perfect knight, 
pure, serene in the confidence of his own faith and 
right, brooking no challenge and no wrong. Here 
Beauty and Strength have kissed one another; and 
the spring of this youthful figure, nimble and light 
of limb, betrays itself even through the hard, 
straight lines of the heavy, rich armour it bears. 
It is the type of the noble Teuton of all time, drawn 
by an artist who had studied the nude and Italian 
plastic art, and was full of the vigour and confid- 
ence of his own youthful ideal. For this bronze 
surely conveys that conviction of agility for a 
moment at rest, which you may derive from the 
sight of a Greek marble or the lithe figure of a 
modern athlete. And is there not also here some- 
thing “of that marvellous gesture of moving him- 
self within the” bronze, which Vasari so finely 
attributed to the St. George of Donatello? 
There may perhaps be in this figure a touch of 
exaggeration which is so splendidly absent from 
that supreme triumph of the Renaissance; itis 
certainly more virile and it may be more brutal; 
but it is enough to claim for Vischer that in this 
noble creation he challenges comparison with “the 
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