Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/200

188 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE sent specimens of their handicraft all over Europe. They did not confine their business to mere orna- mental works, costly vases and so forth, but excelled in modelling figures and casting them in different metals. The ornaments of that period were all of great artistic value. They represented all kinds of figures, single and in groups, religious and secular, and done in metal and enamel — enamelled peacocks, for instance, with dazzling tails ; the figures of ladies with light-coloured dresses and golden crowns studded with pearls and precious stones. In 1509 the Council of Nuremberg ordered gold, silver, and enamelled flowers of great beauty to be made for Ladislaus, king of Hungary. In 1512 it presented Lawrence, the bishop of Wiirtz- burg, with a silver reliquary on which the emblems of the months of the year were most artistically carved. 1 In order to form some idea of the wealth of gold and silver work in Germany in the fifteenth century we have only to read the treasure-lists of some of the churches, such as the Church of Our Lady in Nurem- berg in 1466, and the Cathedral of Freising in 1482. In the inventory of the Cathedral of Passau we read of silver reliquaries in the shape of churches and towers, of twenty silver branches, of forty silver statues, shrines, and monstrances. In the Cathedral of Bern, among other treasures, were a silver statue of the Christ weigh- ing thirty-one pounds, two silver-gilt angels of eighty pounds weight, silver busts of St. Vincent and St. Acha- tius, a massive casket for relics of the patron saint 1 A decree of the Council of Nuremberg in 1552, directing the spoiling of the churches, gives some of the art wealth of the city. The gold and silver weighed 900 lbs. and brought 1,700 marks. The works of Albert Diirer were sold as ' Papist pictures ' to Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Hollanders.