The soft, transparent handling of the drapery is, generally speaking, wholly un-German. For, until the epoch roughly marked for us by the great _Adam and Eve_ of Albert Dürer, the study of the nude played but a small part in the labours of the German artists, and they did not trust themselves to use drapery as a means of revealing the form beneath. Their study of anatomy had so far been concentrated upon heads and hands and feet, and they treated drapery with exceeding care both as an aim and object in itself, and, more than a little, as a useful screen for defective bodies. But they were beginning to appreciate now the endeavours of a Jacopo de’ Barbari to reveal the nude form through the drapery of his figures. And to achieve this end Vischer, like Dürer, had realised that a study of anatomy and the careful drawing of the contours of the body are necessary. In some cases the drapery of the female figures, as, for instance, of those in the relief which illustrates the miracle of the “Icicles,” directly suggests the manner of Barbari, but in the miracle of the “Healing of the Blind Man” the artist has modelled his work on the antique. Thus he has taken the further step of the Italians who, after struggling to reproduce the perfections of the human body, and recognizing how far short of classic art they fell, had turned to regenerate the antique, and so gave rise to the true Renaissance which is the new birth of the old. Between one pair of the four reliefs dealing with the miracles of St. Sebald and the other there is so marked a difference in manner and style that I do not think we can be far wrong if we attribute, with Seeger, that of the “Icicles” and the “Healing of the Blind Man” to Peter Vischer the younger, and the others, especially and certainly that of the “Punishment of the Unbeliever” to his father. The particular point which strikes one as most admirable, and which is in greater or less degree common to all of them, is the simplicity of the grouping and the avoidance of that sin of overcrowding which beset so many artists of the day. (Ill. 10 and 11.) The miracles of St. Sebald which were chosen as subjects for these reliefs are, briefly, the following. St. Sebald was the son of a Danish king who had renounced the things of this world in favour of the chaste and solitary life of a hermit. He afterwards made his way to Rome and was sent forth thence by Pope Gregory the Second to preach the Gospel in Germany. On his way he abode for a while at Vicenza, and there one day he received a visitor for whom he ordered his disciple Dionis to bring the pitcher of wine. Dionis hesitated, for he had allowed himself to partake of the wine the night before, and he feared detection. But when the order was repeated he went to fetch the pitcher, and behold, he found it filled again to the brim.