Veit Stoss

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Veit Stoss (Polish: Wit Stwosz) (ca. 1445-1450 in Horb am Neckar - 20 September 1533 in Nuremberg) was along with Adam Kraft and Peter Vischer the most important sculptors of the late Gothic sculpture in Germany.^[1] Veit Stoss was one of the first artists from Northern Europe who could be compared with Italian Renaissance artists. The power of expression of the gestures of his characters, compounded by the folds in their garments, give his sculptures a dramatic aspect.

Veit Stoss, besides being a sculptor, was also a productive engraver and painter. Through his engravings he could circulate his works on a generous scale. But even in the two-dimensional space of his engravings, he always expressed himself as a sculptor.

In 1473 Stoss moved to Nuremberg where he married Barbara Hertz. His eldest son Andreas was born there. In 1477 he renounced^{[citation needed]} his Nuremberg citizenship and went to Kraków, where he created the magnificent polychrome wooden altar in St Mary's Church which he finished in 1484. It was the largest altar of this time. Other importants work of this period are the tomb of Polish king Casimir IV in the Wawel Cathedral, the marble tomb of Zbigniew Olesnicki in Gniezno and the altar of Saint Stanislaus.

In 1496, he went back to Nuremberg with his wife and eight children. There he acquired the citizenship for three guldens and started to work on wood carved altars, groups and single figures. In particular, between 1500 and 1503 he carved the Assumption of Mary altar for the parish church in Schwaz, Tirol. In 1503, he copied the seal and signature of a fraudulent contractor and was sentenced to be branded on his both cheeks and not allowed to leave Nuremberg without an explicit permission of the city council. (Another account of this incident, by Lawrence Weschler, states "Actually, what happened was that the Nuremberg master was sentenced to death, with his sentence commuted at the last moment, owing to the irreplaceable splendor of his craft, though the hangman did go ahead and stick a red-hot poker through his opened mouth from one side of his face to the other, leaving the paired cheek-gash scars by which he would come to be identified for the rest of his life.")

In spite of the prohibition, in 1504 he went to Münnerstadt to paint the altar of Tilman Riemenschneider. He also created the altar in the Bamberg Cathedral and various other sculptures in Nuremberg, including the Annunciation and Tobias and the Angel. In 1506 he was arrested again. Emperor Maximilian wrote a grace letter, but it was rejected by the council of the Imperial free city (freien Reichsstadt) as interference into its internal affairs. In 1512, the Emperor requested his input for the planning of the Imperial tomb in the Hofkirche of Innsbruck.

During the period 1515-1520, Veit Stoss received a commission for sculptures by Raphael Torrigiani, a rich Florentine merchant who wanted to enter the Church. In 1516 he made for him Tobias and the Angel (now in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg). His next assignment was a statue of Saint Roch for the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. This wooden statue represents the saint in a traditional way: in the garb of a pilgrim, lifting his tunic to demonstrate the plague sore in his thigh. Even Giorgio Vasari, who didn't think much of artists north of the Alps, praised in his book "De Vite" this statue and called it "a miracle in wood". ^[2]

Veit Stoss was buried at St. Johannis cemetery in Nürnberg, in tomb No. 268.

In St. John Cantius, Chicago there is a 1/3^rd scale copy of the St. Mary's Church Altar.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, Michael Baxandall, 1980
• (German) Kirchenlexikon
• (German) R. Kahnsitz (ed.), Veit Stoss in Nürnberg. Werke des Meisters und seiner Schule in Nürnberg und Umgebung; catalogue of the exhibition, München, 1983
• (German) Zdzislaw Kepinski, Veit Stoss; Verlag der Kunst (1981); ISBN 8322101384
• (German) Piotr Skubiszewski, Der Stil des Veit Stoss; Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 41, issue 2 (1978), pp. 93-133

[edit] External links

• Gallery of Works
• "Veit Stoss". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company. 
• The Veit Stoss altar replica at St. John Cantius, Chicago, USA