Both the statues that hail from Nuremberg are extremely beautiful, but they are noticeably different in style. They differ so much in that unconscious revelation of the artist’s hand, which distinguishes every piece of human work, that I am strongly inclined to accept Dr. Seeger’s view, that whilst Peter Vischer the father wrought Theodoric, King of the Goths, it is to his son and namesake, Peter Vischer the younger, that we owe the statue of King Arthur. Theodoric leans on his sword and shield in a pose that is beautiful and imaginative, it is true, but in the execution slightly forced. This figure is weaker and more conventional, less full of life and vigour than that of the King Arthur. Seeger fancies that we can trace in it something of the uneasiness felt by the old craftsman when essaying a new style, and that there is discernible here the slight hesitation and misgiving of one who fears that he is attempting what is beyond his strength. Certainly we get no such impression when we turn to the splendid strenuous figure of Arthur. This _is_ the Arthur whom we know, in all the splendour of his manhood, bold and free, the noblest flower of chivalry; Arthur, the very perfect knight, pure, serene in the confidence of his own faith and right, brooking no challenge and no wrong. Here Beauty and Strength have kissed one another; and the spring of this youthful figure, nimble and light of limb, betrays itself even through the hard, straight lines of the heavy, rich armour it bears. It is the type of the noble Teuton of all time, drawn by an artist who had studied the nude and Italian plastic art, and was full of the vigour and confidence of his own youthful ideal. For this bronze surely conveys that conviction of agility for a moment at rest, which you may derive from the sight of a Greek marble or the lithe figure of a modern athlete. And is there not also here something “of that marvellous gesture of moving himself within the” bronze, which Vasari so finely attributed to the St. George of Donatello? There may perhaps be in this figure a touch of exaggeration which is so splendidly absent from that supreme triumph of the Renaissance; it is certainly more virile and it may be more brutal; but it is enough to claim for Vischer that in this noble creation he challenges comparison with “the Master of those who know.” Doubtless, indeed, both his Arthur and his St. Peter of the Sebaldusgrab owe not a little to the masterpiece of Donatello. But the beauty of the figure and pose of King Arthur is not all. It need not blind us to the exquisite ornamentation of the armour, which, unlike that of Theodoric, is rich with the richness of the North Italian Renaissance. The dragons thereon are full of life, and the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and all the other minute details of the decoration, are as notable for the fecundity of invention as for the skill in execution which they display.