The rough sketch for this tomb or part of it is all that we should care to attribute to Peter Vischer in this matter. He must have entrusted the execution of the commission to one of his less gifted sons, who was following without being able completely to master the developments which were taking place in the style of the House. The tomb, by whatever hand, has clearly been executed at two different periods and in two distinct parts. In style the original portion, which is the lower, is stiff and conventional, and the architectural framework is chiefly Gothic, with here and there, as in the case of the medallion-heads, a touch of the Renaissance. The later portion is the upper, and it reflects the change which had in the meantime come over the artistic aims of the House of Vischer; but it reflects them in a feeble and uncertain manner. The mantle of the Renaissance appears to sit uneasily on shoulders cast in the Gothic mould, and to betray the workman who has never got rid of the hardness and stiffness of his early days. But he obeys none the less the influence of the artists in the house, and after his father’s death signs the monument Johann Vischer. A much more successful instance of Hans Vischer’s work in the Renaissance style would be the canopy over the tomb of St. Margaret in the Parish Church of Aschaffenburg. The authorship of this canopy must not, indeed, be attributed to that craftsman without reserve; but, if it did come from the Nuremberg foundry at all, to Hans should be given the credit of it. For it belongs to the year 1536. [Illustration: STEIN PHOTO.] [RATHAUS COURT, NÜRNBERG 28. THE APOLLO FOUNTAIN]