Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/191

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING ]79 seems to breathe forth from the great masterpieces of these arts. The churches were not only houses of prayer, but monumental exponents of Biblical history. They were also museums, always open to any among the people, historical galleries, where from year to year fresh works of art were always being placed. By constant contem- plation of these works from earliest youth artistic taste was cultivated ; and artists were kept well employed, for new orders were constantly given, both by indi- viduals and societies. Each wealthy family, each guild or society, each brotherhood, wished to have its own artistic monument to the honour of God — either a picture, a statue, a stained-glass window, or an altar. The different mem- bers of the donor's family were sometimes themselves represented at the feet of the sacred subject ; and the artist often drew a representation of himself in some corner of the group of praying figures, or, as in the case of Adam KrafFt in the Chapel of the Sacrament in St. Lawrence's in Nuremberg, kneeling as if in prayer, clad in his working apron and with his tools in his hands. All provinces of life, secular as well as religious, public as well as private, were beautified and idealised by painting and sculpture. The city halls, arsenals, and other public buildings, the houses of the wealthy burghers, which were almost art galleries, all testified to the universal culture of the times. Nor were the dwellings of the poor left undecorated ; they always had an image or picture of the family patron saint on the front. Even the public thoroughfares showed how closely the love of art was connected with the everyday life of the people. The streets, with their frescoed N-2