Now if this female figure above mentioned is rightly interpreted as reminding us of the life to come, the heavenly life, we may regard it as a later and natural variation of the allegory of earthly life represented by the other and earlier work. There the female figure of Life is standing with her foot upon a skull, trampling on the emblem of Death, and is pointing to herself, gazing self-centred, as who should say, “Enjoy life, think on me and forget the death that cometh with the morrow.” And on the tablet at her feet recurs the legend, “VITAM NON MORTEM RECOGITA!” She is teaching the Renaissance love of beauty and the lesson of the joy of existence and the frank delight in the things of this earth. Probably, then, this work was executed shortly after the young craftsman’s sojourn in Italy, when he was filled with the joy of life and had been studying the nude with all the enthusiasm of the early Renaissance school. A mixture of early Renaissance and of mediæval elements is indeed distinctly observable. For the four-cornered vase and its lid is eminently Gothic in character. On the four under sides of the vase we find repeated the sign of the two fish which we have learnt to associate with Peter Vischer the younger, and on the four upper sides the same medallion of a man’s head. Medallions, we know, Peter Vischer the younger turned his hand to frequently after his return from Italy. The Medusa head with the winged helmet, and the club on the base, recall the style of Sansovino, whilst the lion’s feet on which the vase rests, and much of the decoration, correspond with details on the Sebaldusgrab. The pose and the rhythmic movement of the female form are beautiful in themselves, but the neck of the figure is too thick and the body excessively short. When, ten or fifteen years later (1525), the craftsman with a deepened sense of the mystery and sorrow of the world returned to this theme, he read a new meaning into that favourite motto of his, “Think on life not death,” and he also remedied in great part the faults of his earlier effort. The figure, indeed, remains still too short in comparison with its breadth, but it is far slimmer than the other; the work is much more delicate, the lines less accentuated. The artist is now a wiser, sadder, more spiritual man. With his feeling and his knowledge of the world, his power also and his freedom have increased and his mastery of modelling. The influence of his brother’s journey to Rome and of the lessons he had brought home with him, is evident everywhere, and not least in the striving after simplicity which has induced him to leave the base plain and not richly ornamented as was the former one. [Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [INKSTAND, ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, FORTNUM COLLECTION, OXFORD 22. “HEAVENLY LIFE”]