These two heroic figures were completed by the Vischer family as early as the year 1513, but they did not reach the place for which they had been destined till some ten years later, for the Emperor kept them at Augsburg. And even after they had arrived at Innsbruck and been set in position there, they were not left in peace. A great danger threatened Theodoric in 1548, for it did not square with Charles V.’s conception of the order of the Universe that the king of the Goths should be found among the ancestors of the Hapsburgs. He therefore gave orders that his statue should either be recast or at least be renamed. Fortunately neither of these things got itself done. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI THE TUCHER MONUMENT AND THE NUREMBERG MADONNA THE absorbing interest and labour of the Sebaldusgrab did not by any means exhaust the energies and enterprise of Vischer and his house. That want of money, which has been the source of innumerable works of art, combined with the artist’s restless striving after new forms of self-expression, prompted the production of many another bronze during this span of years. We have seen that the heroic figures of Arthur and Theodoric were completed in the year 1513, and to that year also belongs the original design for the Rathaus Railing, the chequered and disastrous history of which we shall describe later. Now it was proposed to found a monument to perpetuate the memory of a famous Doctor of Law (“suæ ætatis Jureconsultorum facile princeps,” says the inscription), one Henning Goden, Provost of Wittenberg and Prebendary of Erfurt. Peter Vischer was entrusted with its execution, and it was erected in 1521 at Erfurt and, in duplicate, at Wittenberg. The subject chosen was that of the crowning of Mary. The Madonna is represented kneeling on the clouds; her hands are folded in prayer and her rich tresses float round a nobly beautiful head and stream over her shoulders. She is in the act of being crowned by God the Father and God the Son, who sit enthroned on either side of the Virgin Mother. The Holy Dove hovers above her. Two characteristic but excessively plump little angels playing musical instruments in either corner fill up the spaces left by the curving scroll work above, whilst at the feet of the Madonna the Prebendary kneels, supported by his patron saint, St. John, whose hand is laid upon his shoulder. Clouds and angels complete the foreground. Of this tomb-plate Lübke writes: “The simple beauty of the composition, the broad, free style of the drapery, the noble loftiness in form and expression of the heads, especially of God the Father, place this work in the ranks of the noblest creations of German art at that date.”