After commencing Meister he continued to work for a while in the Gothic manner of his father and those about him. He received at this time two commissions worth sixty florins apiece, which he executed after the designs of others. The tomb of Bishop Heinrich III., Gross von Trockau, in Bamberg Cathedral (1492) is one of these. It is skilfully wrought in low relief. The bishop, in his episcopal garments, is conceived as standing on a lion, and a Gothic canopy is set over his head. In style it recalls the second commission referred to—the monument in the same cathedral of Bishop Georg II., Marshal von Ebenet, which was wrought by Vischer from a design by Wolf. Katzheimer. [Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [CATHEDRAL, MAGDEBURG 3. TOMB OF ARCHBISHOP ERNST] By the year 1494 the Meister had already laid the foundations of the great reputation which was to be his. For, in company with Simon Lamberger, the wood-carver, he was summoned to Heidelberg by Philip, Elector of the Palatinate, who desired them to “serve him with their counsel and their handiwork.” At the special request of the Nuremberg Council, so we are told,[2] they went; and they stayed there for a considerable space of time to work for the Elector. But of the work they performed at Heidelberg we know absolutely nothing. Peter Vischer was certainly back again in Nuremberg in 1496. For in that year he gave a full release (“aller Dinge quitt, ledig und los”) to his friend Peter Harsdorffer the younger, in whose hands he had left the management of all his affairs during his absence. He returned, perhaps, to execute the important commissions he had received from the North. In the following year he completed the first great work of his life, in which his own individuality is for the first time apparent. For the tomb of Archbishop Ernst in the Cathedral at Magdeburg, is the first of Peter Vischer’s masterpieces, and it affords the most important illustration of the early influences under which he worked. The statue of the Archbishop, who was a brother of John the Stable and Frederick the Wise, lies in high relief beneath a Gothic Canopy, which strongly recalls the famous Pyx then just completed by the artist’s friend, Adam Krafft. The figure, which is represented in cope and mitre, rests on a stone Gothic base, as upon a bed of state, and holds in its hands a crosier and a Pontifical Cross. A pleasing Latin inscription round the monument informs us that “with whatever art the hands of the craftsman have wrought me, yet am I but dust, and contain the dust and all the earthly remains” of the great Archbishop, and it concludes with the prayer that his soul may rest in the consolation of light and peace. (Ills. 3 and 4.) Footnote 2: Baader.