PETER VISCHER
feeble a handling of form. If this Breslau tomb
is indeed later than the other it must be the work
of an apprentice, who has endeavoured to imitate
the idea of the Magdeburg masterpiece, and very
lamentably failed in his endeavour. The decora-
tive work, however, is very much more successful
than the treatment of the figures, of which the
drapery still completely hides the anatomy and
still falls in stiff and angular folds.
But to return to the tomb of Archbishop Ernst.
The artist has adopted that late Gothic style which
was apt to lead to so much that was weak, trivial
and ineffective. But there is here nothing that 1s
excessive or disproportionate. Even in the case
of the canopy above the head of the reclining
Bishop, if we concede the permissibility of its
presence at all, we must also confess that there is
an artistic reason for its existence in the fact that
it furnishes the top which one feels to be required
for the monument. As to the recumbent form
itself, it is, in the strength of its treatment and the
individuality of its portraiture, conceived after the
realistic manner of the day. But Vischer has not
been betrayed into any excess in this direction.
Only it is evident that the influence of that striving
after the impressions of life as the artist sees it,
which has been called Realism, and which yet
leaves room for so much that is ideal, has been
working strongly within him. The broad, heavy
folds of drapery falling straight or almost straight
down the bodies of the Bishop and the Apostles
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