It has, at different times and by various writers, been attributed to almost every conceivable German craftsman—to Adam Krafft, of course, and to Veit Stoss in turn, amongst others. But the work of none of these artists approaches the style, the beauty, the refinement of this figure, and is, in many essentials, distinctly opposed thereto. But if it is not by these, can it be by Peter Vischer’s great son? The theory, it must be confessed, is more probable than provable. We can only say that in his greatest moment he might have done this thing, in making a model for a projected bronze figure. For the creator of the King Arthur at Innsbruck must be conceded to be potentially capable of any masterpiece in this kind, and the Madonna is not beyond the limits of his power. The slenderness of the figure is a point in favour of this authorship, and not, as has been argued, in opposition to it, for there is noticeable in the female figures of the young Peter Vischer, an increasing tendency to discard the squat Bavarian type and to adopt the slenderer proportions of the Italian model. Observe, further, that in the fall of the drapery of the Madonna there is nothing of severity, nothing of distortion as in other carvings of the same period by other hands. Rather do the sweep and movement of it recall that of certain of the apostles of the Sebaldusgrab and the arrangement of it as regards the feet is similar. It may, in fact, be stated, without fear of contradiction, that the serpentine sweep and the arrangement of the drapery, drawn tight over the right leg and covering, as it does, the thrust out foot below, is a motive practically confined in the German art of that period to the works of the House of Vischer. It reminds us of the Apostles in St. Sebald’s church: it is repeated emphatically in the fall of the drapery of the sisters of Lazarus. And surely the pose of the sister of Lazarus on the left hand and that of the Madonna is substantially the same, although, in the case of the latter, it has been refined and improved. That pose of the bent leg is one of the most beautiful and eloquent of all the positions of the human body.[6] But the similarity does not end there. Footnote 6: That it was a favourite one with the young Vischer may be seen by comparing the female figures of the Inkstands, pp. 96, 97.