It was of great height and breadth, with all the majolica lustre which
Hirschvogel learned to give to his enamels when he was making love to
the young Venetian girl whom he afterwards married. There was the
statue of a king at each corner, modelled with as much force and
splendour as his friend Albrecht Duerer could have given unto them on
copperplate or canvas. The body of the stove itself was divided into
panels, which had the Ages of Man painted on them in polychrome; the
borders of the panels had roses and holly and laurel and other
foliage, and German mottoes in black letter of odd Old-World
moralising, such as the old Teutons, and the Dutch after them, love to
have on their chimney-places and their drinking cups, their dishes and
flagons. The whole was burnished with gilding in many parts, and was
radiant everywhere with that brilliant colouring of which the
Hirschvogel family, painters on glass and great in chemistry as they
were, were all masters.
The stove was a very grand thing, as I say: possibly Hirschvogel had
made it for some mighty lord of the Tyrol at that time when he was an
imperial guest at Innspruck and fashioned so many things for the
Schloss Amras and beautiful Philippine Welser, the Burgher's daughter,
who gained an Archduke's heart by her beauty and the right to wear his
honors by her wit. Nothing was known of the stove at this latter day
in Hall. The grandfather Strehla, who had been a master-mason, had dug
it up out of some ruins where he was building, and, finding it without
a flaw, had taken it home, and only thought it worth finding because
it was such a good one to burn.
Pages:
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258