When Peter Vischer received the commission to produce this great memorial of the municipal Saint the lines on which it should be wrought were marked out for him by the traditions of his house and of his art. The sarcophagus should be placed, according to his old design, upon a base adorned with reliefs illustrating the miracles of the Saint; figures of apostles should guard the coffin, and above it should rise a canopy of lofty fretted Gothic pinnacles. Now this original design was for a shrine intended to be over forty feet high, and something after the manner of Adam Krafft’s Pyx. On this, or rather on some slight modification of it, he began to work, and, as he went on, introduced very important alterations under the influence of his sons’ new knowledge. It is due to this process of modification probably that we have to pass the criticism on the Sebaldusgrab that the parts are greater than the whole, though the beauty and finish of the details are so great that, once we are within range of their charm, we forget and forgive any fault in the proportionment of the complete structure. Beginning with the base, most likely at that end where the statue of himself in his leather apron is to be seen, and where the inscription “Beginning by me, 1508,” may be read, Vischer made such good progress with the work that by 1512 Cocleus could write of it in his _Cosmographia_ with amiable exaggeration;—“Quis vero solertior Petro Fischer in celandis fundendisque metallis? Vidi ego totum sacellum ab eo in aes fusum imaginibusque celatum, in quo multi sane mortales stare missamque audire poterunt.” (What more skilful founder is there than Peter Vischer? I myself have seen a whole chapel cast by him in bronze and covered with statues, wherein indeed many people will be able to stand and hear mass.) The chapel then and many of the figures were completed or nearly completed by that date. The alteration of the design to that of this single separate chapel containing the sarcophagus was doubtless due to the journey of Peter Vischer the younger and the examples of Italian tombs, which he had observed, for instance, in the Certosa and in the Cathedral of Pavia. In every part we notice how the Gothic skeleton has been modified or has been clothed with all kinds of decoration in the Renaissance style. The Gothic pillars, indeed, are retained, and the pilasters; but these are richly ornamented. Cupolas, too, have taken the place of the fretted Gothic pinnacles, but yet in the details of their construction, in their flying buttresses and arched openings, the original Gothic design has clearly been used and fused with the new Renaissance models, yielding that architectural effect of mixed Romanesque and Gothic styles, of which Cologne and Mainz afford, among many, the most obvious examples.