ART has been always, more or less, dependent upon the patronage of the rich and great. And the warm interest evinced in the Arts and Crafts by the Emperor Maximilian, the “last of the Knights,” did not a little to provoke that outburst of artistic excellence which distinguished Nuremberg at this time; where the names of Dürer, Vischer, and Krafft shine out pre-eminent among many lesser lights. Maximilian was in many ways the epitome of his age, the personification of the Renaissance. Soldier and man of letters, administrator and theologian, athlete and scholar, he yet found time to encourage artists and to devise and commission innumerable works of art. He was, in fact, as Albert Dürer found to his cost, more ready to give commissions than to pay for them when performed. At Nuremberg he frequently employed Veit Stoss; he had a considerable share in the production of the _Weisskunig_ and the _Theuerdank_, a poem describing allegorically the private life and ideals of the Emperor, which was polished and completed by his secretary Melchior Pfinzing, Provost of St. Sebald’s Church. He conceived and commissioned amongst other works Albert Dürer’s colossal wood-engraving, the _Triumphal Arch_, which was designed, as usual, for the glorification of this greatest of princes. Wherever he happened to be, at Augsburg, Innsbruck, Nuremberg or Prague, in the course of the conduct of one of his innumerable wars or of a tourney, whilst administering justice, repressing the chivalrous brigandage of petty lords or bleeding a Bamberg banker, his eye was always quick to perceive the merit of any craftsman. Chroniclers repeatedly record his morning rides in a town, and describe the visits which he would pay to the houses of half-a-dozen craftsmen in a day, buying and ordering costly works of art. He came to visit also the home of that already celebrated yet always modest and unpretending Founder, Peter Vischer, “to whom Princes esteemed it an honour to do honour.” Maximilian had before now shown a practical interest in bronze work, and had incidentally displayed his appreciation of Vischer. For when he was starting a Foundry at Mühlau, near Innsbruck, he had had it in contemplation to appoint the “geschickligisten und berichtisten Rotschmied”—the most skilful and famous coppersmith of Nuremberg—Peter Vischer to wit, to superintend the establishment thereof. But Peter had declined the honour, and Stefan Godl from Nuremberg was appointed in his stead.