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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