But the huge crown which originally surmounted it was not restored. Celebrated as this carving is, and beautiful as are many of the individual figures and details in the medallions, the Angelic Greeting as a whole is, I confess, too florid and too heavy for my taste. So that, rather than be dishonest in my enthusiasms, I will only add (without superciliousness) that for those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. The praying Mary, who holds in her left hand a book, her right hand being laid upon her breast, and an angel with the staff of the Annunciation, stand alone, over life-size, in the centre of a rose-wreath frame. Over the wreath is carved God the Father, sitting between two angels, with crown and sceptre, blessing the figures beneath. Other angels hovering about Mary make heavenly music. Under the wreath, Eve's serpent (with the apple), is being conquered by the Ave with which the Angel of Annunciation greets Mary. On the wreath itself, seven round medallions in low relief represent the seven joys of Mary:--the Annunciation, Visitation, Birth of Christ, (_cf._ the Rosenkranz-tafel in the Museum), Adoration of the Wise Men, Resurrection of Christ, Pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and Crowning of Mary. * * * * * Krafft and Stoss worked in the Gothic style, but Peter Vischer (1455-1529), the bronze founder, except in his early works, of which there are no examples in Nuremberg, shows the influence of the Italian Renaissance. Perhaps this had come to him through Jacopo dei Barbari, whose influence on Durer we have noted. However that may be, Peter Vischer remains a truly original artist. And yet, the son of a coppersmith, he ever continued to regard himself as a simple artisan. With a workman's cap, and a large leather apron round his waist, with hammer and chisel in hand, the signs of his calling, he has portrayed himself to us in his most beautiful work of art--the shrine of St. Sebald. There, in a niche facing the altar, stands, thick-set and full-bearded, the modest, pious labourer, whose reputation had spread beyond the limits of Germany, and whose bronze work, if we may believe the chronicler, once "filled Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and the palaces of princes throughout the Holy Roman Empire." Seldom did prince or potentate come to Nuremberg without paying a visit to Vischer's workshop. Adam Krafft and Sebastien Lindenast, the coppersmith who made works of art of copper "as if they had been of gold or silver," and who is responsible for the copper figures which adorn the Frauenkirche clock, were his two bosom friends. They seemed, we are told, to have but one heart. All three were equally simple, disinterested, and ever eager to learn. "They were like brothers: every Friday, even in their old age, they met and studied together like apprentices, as the designs which they executed at their meetings prove.