berg took the lead in glass-painting as well as other arts; and there is in this church glass varying in date from the "Ecce homo" of 1274, to the latest and most gorgeous specimens by Veit Hirschvogel. Returning to the outside of the choir, we find that from the basement, which begins immediately below the windows, all ornament is excluded. Above the basement storey, however, the buttresses luxuriate in rich and graceful tabernacle work; their crocketed pinnacles rising to a considerable height above the wall which they support. The windows are externally enriched with delicate shafts, whose capitals carry little gables or canopies. The heads of these gablets have, much to the disfigurement of the church, been cut away and superseded by the present horizontal line of the roof. There are two doors on the north side of the church, one leading into the nave, the other to the choir, with two corresponding to them on the south side. Of these the most remarkable is the northern door, opening on the choir, or more properly on the junction of the nave and choir, distinguished by its rich tracery, and called the Brautthür (bride's door); because, according to the ancient German practice, the bride and bridegroom stood beneath its shelter to receive outside the church the nuptial benediction. Statues of the Virgin and St. Sebald, the latter with his pilgrim's staff and a model of the church, occupy the sides of the porch, and underneath it are ranged on either side, figures of the wise and foolish virgins, in the early Nuremberg style, with much tenderness of expression and boldly flowing drapery. The other door leading to the north aisle, is known as the Anschreibsthür, from the custom which existed when a death occurred, of inscribing on it the name of the deceased. In the tympanum are spirited reliefs relating to the death of the Virgin. Above the south door opposite, is a representation of the Last Judgment, in which Emperors, Popes, and Jews are seized and chained by thoroughly Teutonic demons. The capitals of this doorway are ornamented with grotesque monsters, intended to serve the twofold purpose of scaring away evil spirits, and gently satirizing the besetting sins of the ecclesiastics. The Sybils occupy a similar position on the capitals of the Anschreibsthür. It would be wandering from the subject of this paper to notice further the numerous sculptures with which this church is adorned; but I cannot forbear mentioning two noble works of that prince of German sculptors, Adam Kraft, in which it is difficult to know whether most to admire the union of consummate freedom of design with minuteness of detail, or the air of vitality which the genius of the sculptor has imparted to his New Testament characters, investing them with the costumes and accessaries of Nuremberg citizens of the fifteenth century. I refer to two high reliefs, one representing the Last Judgment, and the other (in a protected recess at the east end) the Burial of the Saviour. A stranger will be surprised with the unmutilated state of the works of art in this and the other churches of Nuremberg. On my first visit to the Sebalduskirche, what with uninjured statues and pictures, the shrine of St. Sebald, and the candles lighted on the altar, I could hardly realize the interior to be that of a Lutheran Protestant church. The cause of this must be sought in the history of Nuremberg. This town, warmly embracing the tenets of the Reformers, had at the same time no share in the iconoclasm which elsewhere disgraced the Protestant cause. The Reformation in Nuremberg was not the work of a lawless mob, who, while attacking the corruptions of the Church of Rome, thought it necessary also to wage war against those arts which humanize and elevate the mind. On the other hand, many of the greatest geniuses who adorned the fine arts in Nuremberg and the adjacent towns, were attached to the Reformers and their cause, and several of them made use of their pencil to aid in promoting the reformed doctrines. Albert Dürer was Melancthon's intimate friend, while Lucas Kranach, a warm adherent of Luther's, aided in bringing about his marriage with Katharine Bora, and executed a series of woodcuts to illustrate Luther's bible. Hence it arose, that when Nuremberg shook off the jurisdiction of Rome, her churches were not subjected to the wholesale demolition perpetrated in other places. Hirschvogel's gorgeous windows, the sculptures of Kraft, and the wood carvings of Veit Stoss, still exist in all their integrity, as also Peter Vischer's masterwork in bronze, occupying the centre of the choir, the shrine of the saint to whom the church is dedicated. This marvel of Nuremberg art consists of a canopy of light rich Gothic, most elaborate in detail, comprising powerful and expressive representations of the twelve apostles. It was executed in the end of the fifteenth century, to contain the sarcophagus of the saint who introduced Christianity into Franconia; and round the coffin are bas-reliefs representing various miracles which he performed during his wanderings. We see him miraculously replenishing a jug with wine, rescuing a man whom the earth was in the act of swallowing up for disbelieving the truth of the doctrines which he promulgated, and making an icicle blaze up one wintry day when his entertainer churlishly refused him fuel. 62 I cannot leave the neighbourhood of the Sebalduskirche without describing the glorious Gothic oriel of the parsonage. It is represented in Plate II.,* and consists of five sides of an octagon, connected by a series of mouldings with an octagonal pier resting on the ground and recessed in niches. To each angle of this oriel is attached a square pier resting on an angel, and terminating in a crocketed pinnacle. The pointed windows have two mullions and geometrical tracery, and in the field below them are represented in bas-relief five events from the life of the Virgin the Annunciation, the Conception, the Offering of the Kings, her Death and Assumption. The parsonage was rebuilt in 1513 by Melchior Pfinzing, a canon of St. Sebald's church, and secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, who sitting in the recess of this oriel, whose panes are now adorned with his portrait, composed his "Tewrdanck," a poem recording that emperor's marriage with Mary of Burgundy. This oriel may be looked on as the perfection of Nuremberg Gothic of the best period, and makes us deeply regret the loss of the building of which it originally formed part. The limits of the present paper will not allow me to describe so fully as I would desire, the church of St. Lawrence, which, more advanced in style, surpasses St. Sebald, both in beauties and in faults. Its west front and nave belong to the latter half of the thirteenth century; but the choir was not completed till the year 1477. The front has two square towers, each surmounted by an octagonal storey, from which a spire flanked with gables rises. The spire to the north was built in 1285, the other, * Plates II. III. IV. V. and VI. are most successful reproductions in lithograph, of some of the excellent series of Etchings published by Schzag at Nuremberg. |