No doubt the stove, though it
had known three centuries and more, had known but very little
gratitude.
It was one of those magnificent stoves in enameled faience which
so excited the jealousy of the other potters of Nurnberg that in a
body they demanded of the magistracy that Augustin Hirschvogel
should be forbidden to make any more of them,--the magistracy,
happily, proving of a broader mind, and having no sympathy with
the wish of the artisans to cripple their greater fellow.
It was of great height and breadth, with all the majolica luster
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, modeled with as
much force and splendor as his friend Albrecht Durer 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 moralizing, 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 coloring of which the Hirschvogel family,
painters on glass and great in chemistry, as they were, were all
masters.
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