Germany was already in the bitter throes of that Catholic reaction from which she was only destined to emerge after the terrible ordeal of the Thirty Years’ War. Nuremberg herself was engaged in a bitter and exhausting struggle with her hereditary enemies the Margraves of Brandenburg. Wars must needs come, but artists are the first to suffer from them. For peace and prosperity are necessary to provide citizens with the means of enjoying that luxury which is art. And art is the first luxury which men under the pressure of taxation are willing to deny themselves. It was then, probably, for these reasons, and perhaps from other considerations of which we know nothing, that Hans Vischer decided to leave the “quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song” which was his birth-place. He accepted the terms which were imposed upon him by the Council, and on which he obtained leave of absence to live at Eichstädt and at other places, if he chose, for five years. At the expiration of that term, however, it was stipulated that he should return and dwell at his old home in Nuremberg. Whether he did so return we are not informed. For with his departure in 1549 he disappears for ever from our ken. Thus the members of the Vischer family were scattered, and their works, under the stress of the wars and misery which came upon the land, were forgotten or confused, and the name and fame of their house sank once more into that obscurity whence Hermann Vischer had begun to raise it just a century before. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER X THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WORKS OF THE VISCHERS THE position of the Vischers in the hierarchy of the artists not very difficult to appreciate, and it has perhaps been sufficiently indicated in the course of our enumeration of their works. They—for in forming an estimate of their work, we need not, nor cannot, separate father and sons—were great craftsmen, interpreting the teachings of other and greater artists of other lands, but yet assuredly not without an individuality and original power of their own. The view once advanced by Heideloff cannot be for a moment entertained, the view, that is, that they were mere workers in bronze who reproduced in that material the ideas and drawings of others. The evidence of our eyes, which enable us to trace the development of their style, would be enough to refute that opinion, even if we were without the documentary evidence which shows that father and sons alike were patient and painstaking draughtsmen as well as craftsmen all their lives.